Cyber crime is something that has been around for years. Its common knowledge that someone is probably duped out of money every day. We all get these strange phone calls supposedly from the banks with some flimsy excuse about credit and debit cards being blocked. Or there are the frequent emails from unknown people in Africa and elsewhere in the world giving you a sob story and asking for money. Other times there are suspicious texts stating that you’ve won a ton of money and you need to send you bank details to collect the same. It’s completely insane that a lot of people still fall for it, educated or not.
Unfortunately, she paid for it but you get the lesson for free
Speaking of being duped in this regard, below you will read about Dr. Nandita De Souza from Sethu‘s, clash with cyber crime. She hopes that after reading her story, no one else will fall for such fraudsters and tricksters.
She said that she received a call from a professional sounding lady saying that she was calling from State Bank of India’s Debit card division. The reason being that Nandita had an old card which was blocked so the bank needed to verify the same and issue her a new one. The way these con artists proceeded to get money from her was quite a feat. Not one to be applauded but still a story worth telling. That way, everyone can be more vigilant about not sharing details with such people.
This is her story…
“Today I am in a very generous mood!”
“To start with, this morning I had a very expensive but effective, practical, hands-on, one on one, personalized tutorial on cyber theft for which I paid a cool INR 35,000 in fees. Since my generosity is in full flow, I am sharing this educational experience with you FOR FREE! Here is the lesson…”
When cyber crime hits
As it goes, Nandita received a call from this very professional sounding lady reconfirming that she had a debit card. This was going to be blocked. They needed to verify that the card belonged to Nandita so that they could issue her a new one. Additionally, there were some points which needed to be transferred from the old card to the new one. She politely informed them that she would not be giving out personal details about the card. The lady on the phone told her she was smart but they didn’t want any such information.
It turns out that the con artists already had the first 8 digits of the card number and only needed Nandita to confirm the remaining ones so that they could start the transfer process.
The lady from the bank said that the good doctor would get an OTP which had to be given over the phone for verification. Which Nandita did. The first time she gave the lady the OTP, the lady claimed that there was a problem with the server and asked if she could send a new one. This happened multiple time where Nandita possibly shared at least 6 OTPs and each one was claimed to be ‘useless’. And every time she shared these, the criminals withdrew almost 5000 rupees at each turn. Nandita was too busy at the time with other things as well to pay much attention. She didn’t even know she had been robbed until the actual SBI bank staff called her and informed her that she was a victim of cyber crime.
How could it have happened?
In hindsight, Nandita realised she was completely distracted at the time and not vigilant enough. Perhaps, also hearing the correct 8 digits of the card sounded authentic enough to give out information. Unfortunately, she did end up losing approximately 35000 rupees in this whole debacle. Despite that, she is happy that no one got hurt in this whole process of ‘bakri-fication’.
She has reported this to the bank as well as the police but there’s a high chance she won’t see the money ever again. The thieves may never be caught even though Nandita has shared the telephone number that they called from, with the authorities. She is curious though, as to how they could have gotten her details that easily.
Nandita has actually shared this story in the hopes that no one else ever gets conned out of money the way she did.
If you would like to know all about cyber crime, read about it here.
Information credit : Dr. Nandita De Souza’s Facebook page
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