The chief executive officer of a private company filed a complaint with the police that his SBI account was hacked and an amount of Rs 5 lakh transferred to an ICICI account. Interestingly, his phone was deactivated twice and only got activated once the unknown payee was added to his account. The second time it happened, money was transferred from the account. The complainant, who did not want to be named, said, “All my transactions are done online. I don’t remember whether I had changed the password on one of the days, but on May 23, a person named Tarun was added as a payee to my account when my phone number got disconnected. I didn’t receive any message about him being added though.”
“Whenever a password is changed, a new password is applied for or any other transaction is carried out with the bank, we get an SMS message. However, on June 2, the same thing happened again and this time Rs 5 lakh from my SBI account was transferred to an ICICI account. The money was withdrawn the same day by way of two ‘cash paid self’ cheques and some ATM withdrawals while the rest was withdrawn at a few stores in various places.”
The fraudster from Visakhapatnam, submitted the ID details of the victim to an Airtel vendor and took the same mobile number as the victim’s. He ens-ured that whenever he used internet banking, he deactivated the victim’s number and got the passwords and ID to add himself to the account and remove the money.
“I was shocked when I got a message regarding my application for a new sim card. When I checked my account on June 2, I got to know about the money missing from my account and filed a complaint with the police,” the victim said.
Meanwhile, the police are on a lookout for the accused in Visakhapatnam. SBI officials weren’t available for comment, but an Airtel spokesperson said, “Airtel is compliant to all rules and regulations. The particular case is currently being investigated and we will extend all support to the concerned person.”