ATM fraud has been constantly hitting people robbing them off their hard earned money. There are several rackets working in this area. On one side where news channels and banks, news paper and other social media are continuously alerting people not to fall prey to such frauds, greed for easy money is still robbing people off.

Several people are constantly getting calls out of which most of the calls are being made through call centre staff alluring people get their work done even while staying tied to the comforts of their sofas and beds. Many people have been robbed through such fraudulent calls.

Phone calls done by females consist mostly of all relevant information of a particular person forcing them to believe in the caller. These females represent some or the other call centre which turns out to be a make-shift office of the racket involved in these activities. The calls are anything like activating a blocked credit card, an overdue or dormant life insurance policy, benefits offered by banks and also easy home loans.

Banks have been sending messages to their customers warning them not to give away debit/credit card details, PIN and passwords to anyone. Banks have also alerted people that none of the bank employees would ever ask for any such details over phone. Yet people trust phone calls when they feel that somebody on the other side of the line can make their work easy without having to stand in queues or without filling forms.

A racket was recently busted by the police where young girls from call centres were part of the fraud plans and were taking bank details of people and passing them onto the racket leaders. These girls were paid only 5k as salary but enjoyed all comforts like swimming pool parties and luxury vacations. By taking details of people’s debit or credit cards, these girls assisted the racket who withdrew ample amount of money from the victims’ accounts. A TV news channel has warned people once again not to fall prey to such calls since recovering money may become an extremely difficult task. The news channel also said that finding these criminals is almost an impossible task most of the time since the mobile numbers used are issued under fake names and addresses. Even the online money transactions invited by these criminals are difficult to trace.

People have also fallen prey to easy interest free home loan schemes through phone calls where they are asked to pay a certain amount to activate registrations. All this later turns out to be fake. The common public realises that they have been robbed only when the money is deducted from their accounts immediately and the caller disappears in no time switching off the untraceable phone number. People have lost more than lakhs of rupees from their account as a result of these phone calls.

Please DO NOT ENTERTAIN SUCH PHONE CALLS. DO NOT GIVE YOUR CARD NUMBERS TO ANYONE AND DO NOT EVEN INVITE SUCH PEOPLE TO COME HOME FOR FORM FILLING PURPOSES. YOU ARE INVITING TROUBLE IF YOU DO SO.

Image : indianexpress/thenortheasttoday