HomePersonal FinanceE-fraud – Learning from Crime Petrol story

E-fraud – Learning from Crime Petrol story

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Crime Petrol – Dastak is famous TV show on SONY, they show real story behind every crime.  Recently they have shown real case of e-fraud happened at Chennai, India.

We are herewith inside story and real learning from this story.

Real Story of E-fraud:-

Pratiksha 30 year old software engineer based out at Chennai was 7 year old employee of TCS eServe -Tata Consultancy Services  which works for backend operations of the well-known international bank Citibank.

Pratiksha got married a few months ago, and her husband is also software professional. Pratiksha’s childhood friend was in dire need of money. He encourages Pratiksha to steal some money from any of the old bank account which is dormant (Not in use for a long time).

She identified some bank accounts lying inactive for more than a year and changed the addresses of the account holders. She then sent requests for credit and debit cards to the bank, as if the customers were doing it. This misguided the bank to send credit and debit cards to the new addresses, where her friend has received it. Her friend used the cards and taken out of Rs 49 lakh from account.

The bank officials felt suspicious at one point and verified with the customer who said he had not made any requests or transactions for a while. Bank has informed to the TCS eServe, which later found that the data was accessed and modified from Pratiksha’s computer. Accused Pratiksha confessed to having committed the offence, she.is behind the bar her friend is still absconding

Learning from story to the customer:-

Make Regular transaction from your account:-

Account targeted in this case is dormant account meaning account not used by customer for long time. If no transaction — credit or debit other than crediting of periodic interest or debiting of service charges takes place in your savings account for more than 12 months, the account becomes inactive. And if the period exceeds 24 months the account is declared dormant or inoperative. The exact period after which a bank is declared inactive or dormant varies from one bank to another.

So don’t keep any account inoperative for several days. Your account may turn in inactive state and you may become target of fraud like this.

Usually account turns in inactive state due to lethargy, lack of time, and so on. If the idea is to earn interest on money that you don’t need in the near future, other options like fix deposits are available rather than letting it languish in a savings account where it earns only 3 per cent return.

Regularly check Balance/Account statements:-

If your account is in operative status than also keep watch on your accounts regularly, periodically verify account statement and balance status. If you find any discrepancy get in touch with Bank immediately.

Better to invest money:-

It is always better to invest money rather than keeping it in saving bank account. Imagine person keeping 49 Lakh rupees in saving bank account which is in dormant state.

From my point of view person holding this account with lakhs of rupees is fool, as he is losing opportunity of earning decent returns from investment.

Learning from story to the Bank:-

Proactively Informing customer:-

We see number of call from bank representative regarding home loan, car loan or personal loan but bank representative never call customers if account is about to turn in inactive state.

If bank take little concern to inform customer proactively either by phone, email or mail this type of fraud can be prevented.

Tighten Security or Relook in Process:-

Basically this fraud has taken place due to security breach. Most of bank operates with outsourcing model where backend operation are outsourced and given to third party software companies.

Although bank works on outsource model clear cut process and highest level of security is required in terms of accessibility of highly sensitive data of customer.

Biometric based Security:-

Bank should think of two factor or biometric based security solution to stop this kind of e-fraud.

Customer is keeping his hard earned money in bank considering bank is safe place to keep money. But looking at incident above bank is even not safe place to keep your money.

Do share your view/comments on above.

Shitanshu Kapadia
Shitanshu Kapadiahttp://moneyexcel.com/
Hi, I am Shitanshu founder of moneyexcel.com. I am engaged in blogging & Digital Marketing for 10 years. The purpose of this blog is to share my experience, knowledge and help people in managing money.