Cyber criminals’ new ruse: Pose as RBI officials

MUMBAI: Cyber criminals, who used to cheat people by posing as bank executives have upgraded themselves. They now claim to be senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to gain their victims’ implicit trust.

The incidents have seen a spike to the extent that bank officers and the police have coined the term ‘vishing’ for this modusoperandi. The BKC cyber police station stumbled upon a new pattern in vishing frauds on Friday when a 24-year-old employee of a diamond company in BKC registering a complaint with them.

Vijaykumar Prasad, a Charni Road resident, told the police that he received a phone call on Wednesday from a person who identified himself as Aakash, a senior bank manager of the RBI’S branch in Chembur.

“The caller told the complainant, who has an international debit and shopping card of a nationalised bank, that his debit card needed to be verified and sought his card’s details. While Prasad was initially reluctant to share the details, he relented when the caller kept making repeated calls and then threatening that his card will be blocked,” said an officer from the BKC cyber police station.

The complainant then not only shared his card number but also sent him the text messages with the PIN. He soon received a series of messages stating that Rs26,000

has been debited from his account, another officer said.

Prasad then confronted the caller about the unauthorised transactions and he was asked to not worry as the money will be credited back to his account within 12 hours. After he did not get the money back next day, he realised he has been cheated.

An officer of the BKC police station said the crime seems to

be handiwork of a gang that has been operating without custom ers’ data. Earlier, the criminals used to steal data and then con vince the victims they were call ing from the bank.

“We would appeal to people not to fall into the traps laid by fraudsters posing as bank or RBI officials. No official from the RBI calls an individual for verification or lottery,” the officer said.