Kochi: Online frauds offer to replace old debit cards

Kochi: Falling for online banking fraud rackets that are active again in the state will be injurious to your financial health.

The fraudsters based in North-Indian states are duping unsuspecting victims by ringing them up and offering to replace old ATM-cum debit cards with new chip-based ones only to trick them into giving details like the One Time Password (OTP).

At least three residents of Piravom fell prey to the racket the other day and lost '1.33 lakh in no time. The first to lose money was one Scaria Vat-takattil who lost Rs 48,000 on Wednesday evening.

The caller identified himself as manager of Tripunithura branch of the Federal Bank and won the latter’s confidence by telling his bank account number and other details. He then asked Scaria to replace his old ATM card with a new chip-based one as per the RBI guidlines and directed him to reach the Tripunithura bank the next day.

“In between he offered to make the process simple by moving the application and in the melee tricked the victim into giving his PIN number. When he reached the bank the next day, the victim was shocked to learn that he was deceived and that the racketeers withdrew '48,000 from a remote location in Delhi,” police said.

The racket deceives victims by citing the Reserve Bank of India directive to all banks to replace their magnet stripe based old ATM cum debit cards with new EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip based ones.

“Two more residents in Piravom were tricked by the racketeers in the same manner and came to know about the fraud when they too reached the bank branch on Thursday morning,” they said.

The Piravom Police lodged three cases based on the complaints. 

“We’ve taken cases as per section 406 IPC (Criminal breach of Trust) and 420 IPC (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property). More victims are approaching us now,” they said.