Hyderabad: How do credit card fraudsters get details of their victims before they make calls pretending to be bank officials? Cyber crime officials suspect that employees hired by banks from outsourcing agencies might be selling the internal databases of banks to the fraudsters.
Although no arrests have been made regarding this so far, police says that identity details of customers are being leaked by outsourcing agencies. Some fraudsters purchase databases online.
The crooks usually know the name of the victim. Most people get convinced when they hear their name from the scammer’s mouth. One of the victims, an HR manager working for a private firm, got a call from a scammer, who identified himself as an SBI official and claimed that he was calling to upgrade the victim’s credit card.
“He called me by name and told me when my credit card would expire. Then he said he was going to upgrade the card and needed details. He then asked me for the first four digits of my credit card and then, the last four digits. He told me that I would receive gift cards and 20 per cent discounts in future,” said the victim, who lost around '14,000 to the scammer.
Police say their investigation points to links between fraudsters and outsourcing agencies. But the police has never tracked down any employee of outsourcing agencies so far.
Sources say that police officials stop investigation when they arrest the fraudster and never dig deeper to get information on how the details of victims got leaked.
A senior CCS official admitted that they could never arrest anybody who helped the fraudster by giving away database info.
