5 things you can do to recover money stolen from your bank account

Credit to Author: Rajib Singha| Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:20:26 +0000

What I am about to discuss in this post are measures that I took trying to recover the money that was stolen from my mother’s bank account. Not going much into the details about the background of the incident occurred, I will come straight to the point. My mother (a homemaker) received a call on 14th February 2017 from a person pretending to be a manager of the bank (bank’s name not revealed for privacy reasons) she has her account in. The caller tricked her into revealing her ATM card details such as the card number, expiry date, and CVV number. Then the caller asked my mother to reveal a set of OTPs (one time passwords) sent to her registered mobile phone (clearly, the criminal had initiated online transactions using the card’s details for which he needed the OTP). A few minutes later, an amount of almost Rs. 50,000 was debited from her account. By the time she informed me about the incident, it was too late. This particular incident is known as a phishing attack – where the attacker tricks the victim into revealing their confidential information. What did I do immediately? 1. Reported the incident to the bank. The account was frozen and the ATM card was blocked. 2. Lodged an FIR in the local police station. 3. Noted down the details of all the transactions that took place at the time (there were 4). These include the date, time, amount, merchant’s name, and others. 4. Contacted every merchant whose name was included in the transactions. I reached out to them via their Twitter accounts, emails and customer care. Informed them that the debit card used in the transaction was used fraudulently, without my mother’s authorization. They asked for certain details to verify my claim. These included the debit card number (first four and last four digits), date and time of the transaction. 5. Reported the case to Cyber Crime Cell Mumbai division (mumbai@mahapolice.gov.in). They replied saying that they do not take direct complaints and suggested me to lodge an FIR with my local police (which I already did) who will then forward the case to the Cyber Crime Cell. What happened soon after? Three merchants were involved in the transactions. By ‘involved’ it means that the criminal used their services (e-wallet) to steal the money from my mother’s bank account. One of these merchants turned out to be immensely helpful. After having verified my claim, they were kind enough to revert the transaction that the criminal made using their e-wallet. The amount was about Rs. 20,000. So, what might have happened in this case is, the money did not get transferred elsewhere or used in any way before I reported the case. I was, however, not so lucky in recovering the rest of the money (Rs. 30,000). Reason – the services were already delivered. Meaning, in one case, the money got transferred to a certain bank account and in another case, the money was used to purchase movie tickets. These two merchants, however, helped me with some in-depth information of the transactions such as the IP address of the computer used, the bank account where the money was transferred to, date, time, etc. I shared these details with the police and the Cyber Crime Cell, just in case. The bitter truth Banks have always been clear about their warnings to customers about not disclosing any personal or banking information over call, SMS, or email no matter what. Hence, in this particular case, the bank holds my mother accountable for whatever happened. In short, it would be unwise to expect that the bank will somehow recover the loss. How to protect yourself from such scams? Criminals are making money because they are smart. They know how to lure their victims into their trap. So, it is up to us how we prevent ourselves from getting trapped. Educate everyone in your family and friend circle about phishing attacks and other such online scams. Most of time, we assume that these incidences cannot happen with us but you never know. Never give out any personal information (including financial) to anyone over a call, SMS, or email. The caller may sound…
http://blogs.quickheal.com/feed/