Realty exec duped of ₹40,000 after giving away card details

MUMBAI: Fraudsters have come up with yet another trick to cheat unsuspecting people of their money from their bank accounts. Last week, a real estate firm manager in Bandra lost ₹40,000 to a fraudster who posed as her bank executive over the phone and coerced her into ordering a ‘credit card with a photo ID’.

According to the Bandra police, the 39-year-old complainant was in her office in Bandra (West) when she received a phone call from the fraudster on September 3.

The fraudster told the woman that he was calling from her bank. As he got the bank’s name right, she did not suspect that he was lying. The fraudster told the woman that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had asked banks to issue new credit cards for customers with a photo ID, and her old card had to be blocked in order to do that.

The fraudster asked for her 16-digit card number, CVV number and its expiry date. The firm manager parted with all these details, as well as the one-time password (OTP) which she received on her mobile number — which the

fraudster claimed was part of the bank’s verification process.

After ₹40,000 was debited from her bank account via an online transaction, the firm manager’s actual bank representative called her up to check if she made those transactions or not. By the time she said it was not her and asked if her old card had been blocked, the fraudster had gone incognito.

She subsequently filed an FIR against the unknown person last week saying he had impersonated an official and had cheated her. A police officer from the Bandra police station said, “We keep spreading awareness among the public to not to share any [bank] details with anyone over the phone ... but people still fall prey to such fraudsters. ”