Private bank lodged a complaint with police as duped Rs 2.81 lakh ATM cards couldnot reach

A leading private bank has lodged a complaint with the police claiming that 16 of their customers who had sought bank's ATM cards were duped by unknown fraudsters claiming to be bank officials, by inducing the victims to share OTPs in order to activate their ATM cards and did transactions totally worth Rs 2.81 lakh even before the ATM cards could reach the customers.

According to the Srinagar police in Thane, the complainant in the case is branch manager of the Wagle Estate branch of the bank in Thane. The said bank has an agreement with two Navi Mumbai based companies for preparing and supplying ATM cards to the bank's customers.

"Whenever a customer informs the bank about the requirement of an ATM card, the bank then sends all the information about the customer and his/her bank accounts to any of the two companies asking them to prepare the ATM card and dispatch it to the address of the customer. The company then prepares the ATM and sends the same to the customer's address either through a speed post or a courier," the bank has stated in its FIR.

As per the FIR, on March 08, the said branch had received an email from the legal department of their head office, informing that 12 customers of the bank were sent ATM cards but before the cards could reach the customers, they had received phone calls from unknown persons claiming to be bank officials and OTPs were asked from the customers for activation of their cards.

"After the customers shared their OTPs, money was debited from their bank accounts. The said customers had lodged their complaints with the banks through emails and calling on customer care helpline numbers. It has been learnt that after activating the ATM cards, money was withdrawn from different ATM centers," the FIR stated.

A police officer said, "It seems that the fraudsters had cloned the ATM cards of the customers and once they received the OTPs, they had used the cloned cards to withdraw money from ATM centers. At least 16 customers have lost a total of Rs 2.18 lakh in the said fraud. A complaint has been lodged under section 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act."