Mohammed Sajid
Port Blair, Aug 29: Atleast a dozens of innocent SBI account holders of Andaman and Nicobar have already been duped by cyber criminals triggering fear that some insiders of State Bank of India are passing crucial information and data about SBI customers to these Cyber Criminals.
The modus operandi of such crime is simple, the cyber criminals either scare the SBI customers saying that their SBI ATM is unsafe and prone to cyber criminals or they lure SBI customers of heavy price money. In both the case the cyber criminals demand ATM PIN number from the SBI customers and once innocent customers reveal their ATM PIN number, all amount from their bank account are transferred by the Cyber Criminal within minutes.
What bothers most in such cases is that these cyber criminal convince the customers that the call is being made from SBI office and to convince they read out the names, back account number and address of the customers, as if they have complete access to all the data, which only bank should have.
This proves that some insiders are passing crucial information about SBI customers to the Cyber criminal and based on those information the fraud callers are now targeting innocent people.
What disturbs more is that the top officials are of State Bank of India are not only silent in this case but are also trying to hide this matter.
When Andaman Sheekha approached the Mrs. Shanta Kumari, Chief Manager, SBI, Port Blair Branch, she reacted very strangely and refused to give any comment. She gave many excuses to avoid questions raised by Andaman Sheekha.
“Bring an authorization letter from your superior in which all questions should be mentioned then I shall forward those questions to my superiors,” was the lame excuse of the reaction of the Chief Manager.
If SBI staffs are clean then they should help media to fight against such cyber crime, instead of shying away from media.
The work of spreading awareness, which should have done by the bank is being done by media but instead of helping media the SBI officials are not ready to give any comment or share any information.
The million dollar question is why only SBI customers are targeted? Is it because all data of only SBI have been compromised? A CBI and CID inquiry must be conducted in this regard.
The main problem is that such cyber or economic crimes are very difficult to be detected by Police because the miscreants are located very far and they operate through electronic devices and Information Technology network making it virtually impossible task for police to nab the actual culprit and recover the money.
When Andaman Sheekha contacted the Superintendent of Police (South Andaman) and CID, Mr. Chinmoy Biswal, IPS, he said that A & N Police is aware of these incidents. “We are already investigating few such cases. However, such kind of crimes can be best prevented by public awareness so that customers do not fall prey to any such allurement through calls, SMSes or emails ,” Mr. Biswal added.
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