A youth volunteers to help an aged man S. Kasimayan (65) struggling to use his debit card at an ATM centre in Tirumangalam. Later, the man finds that Rs.8,000 has been siphoned off from his card.
In another incident, M. Ramayee (63) of Sedapatti gets a call from a man claiming to be the manager of a nationalised bank where she has an account. The caller says her bank account is about to be blocked and to prevent it, she needed to give personal identification number of her debit card.
The gullible woman follows his words. In the next seven transactions, which she did not make, Rs. 24,500 vanishes from her account.
In the first case, it was a time-tested way of cheating. After operating the ATM machine, the youth had told Kasimayan that his account did not have sufficient funds and returned his debit card.
But, after he left, he withdrew Rs. 8,000.
In the second case, it is the latest way of taking people for a ride through, what is called vishing or getting personal identification number through telephone call by a cheat posing as an official from bank or its agency.
It may look like that only rural people are cheated. But, many of the police personnel across the State were successfully earlier targeted by such fraudsters in the last two years. Even a young principal of a polytechnic college was made to provide the PIN following which he lost Rs. 25,000.
“In the last two years, we have received nine complaints of such frauds involving fraudulently getting PIN from account holders,” the Superintendent of Police, Vijayendra Bidari, said.
While police managed to trace the youth who duped the aged man at the ATM, the police say it was not that easy in case of vishing.
“For, those people operate from far off places like New Delhi. All that the police could know about the suspect is only their phone numbers. But, even the phone numbers are invariably obtained on illegal means by producing fake proof of identity and those are frequently changed,” a police officer said.
It is part of a larger network that makes duplicate debit cards and use the PIN to withdraw money.
Mr. Bidari asked the people to be vigilant against such tricksters.
“No bank will call the customers to get any of the personal details over phone,” he said. The police want people not to respond to calls seeking PIN to avoid deactivation of the. Calls are also made claiming that PIN was required for verification of account details or to give some exciting offers.
