Sri Lankans alerted by CB to email financial scams

Sri Lankans were alerted on Wednesday by the Central Bank (CB) to instances of “financial scams/ phishing emails”.

“The attention of the Central Bank (CB) has been drawn to recent grievances received from the general public regarding financial scams spreading through phishing emails/ social media messages.

The CB has noticed that the image of the Head Office building, the logo of CBSL, names of senior officials of CBSL, are being used by scammers and fraudsters to solicit money from the public by disguising such scams as being sent from a trustworthy entity,” the banking regulator said in a media release.

Fake email addresses such as cbs. banklanka@ asia. com, info@ cbsl- lk. com, customercare@cbsllk.com, etc are used to send these emails. Recipients of these emails are informed of having won a large cash prize in foreign currency through a mobile number draw or through a certain well- known interna- tional brand promotional campaign and are persuaded to deposit certain amount of funds to claim the prize. Further these emails deceive the email recipients, by attempting to obtain personal information including passport/ national identity card numbers, bank account details etc. for authentication purposes, to send cash prizes, the statement said.

“In this regard, the Central Bank wishes to inform the general public that the CB has no involvement with such reward schemes. CB has already reported this matter to relevant law enforcement authorities for necessary action.

Hence, the general public is requested not to be victims of such financial scams and to respond to such promises of monetary giveaways by first contacting respective institution/ company that the suspicious email claims to be from to confirm the authenticity of such emails and if found to be a scam, to inform the nearest Police Station for investigations immediately,” it said.