ATM fraud cases up in the hyderabad city

Hyderabad: The number of ATM card fraud cases has rapidly been increasing in the city. This year till 2019, 251 cases of ATM cards fraud cases have been registered by the Cyber crime Hyderabad.

In 2017, 77 cases were registered while in 2018, 117 cases of ATM card frauds were registered in the city. ATM card frauds occur when an unauthorized person gains access to your card or its details. Once the person has access to your card details, a number of fraudulent transactions can be carried out.

Speaking to The Hans India, Y Srinivas Kumar, Assistant Commissioner of Police, SHO (Cyber Crime Police station), Hyderabad, said, "As per the complaints, several lakhs of rupees were withdrawn from ATMs using some dubious method. These seem to be a matter of ATM skimming. We are analysing the complaints. Fraudsters seem to have used some old data of customers which they had gathered earlier."

Most of the suspects of these cyber crimes are traced back to Jharkhand, Bengal and Delhi. Once they receive the money they transfer it into multiple accounts, making it difficult to recover it. They target people in South India. In ATM frauds, a skimmer is installed in the machine and when a card is swiped at the machine, it captures the information stored on the card's magnetic strip.

A camera is installed to capture the PIN number. Skimmers are usually installed in ATMs in busy areas. It is installed at night and collected the next day. Using the details captured, the fraudster transfers the money. In point of sale frauds, under the guise of transferring money, the card is swiped through the skimmer.

However, out of the 251 cases of ATM card frauds in 2019, only 28 cases were detected. Following the ATM card frauds, lottery frauds, uploading fake profiles of women in social media, loan or insurance fraud and matrimonial cheating have seen a rapid increase in number of cases till November 2019.

Adding to this, there have been several cases of online frauds on buying products online. There have been instances where the fraudsters advertise on a product like mobile phones in lesser price than the mrp. After which the victim is asked to pay a specific amount online and later the complete amount from their account gets detected within hours.