CHENNAI: In a swift move, the cyber cell of the city police helped a businessman to get back money that was withdrawn from his account by some US-based fraudsters. The victim, Francis Anthony of Velachery, is into garment business and uses international debit/credit cards during business trips abroad.
“He received two text messages in the first week of August that his international debit card was used to purchase a few products valued `46,819 in Brooklyn. It is suspected that someone had cloned his debit card during one of his trips,” said Adyar Deputy Commissioner of Police V Vikraman.
The official said it was impossible to arrest the culprit as he was accessing the victim’s account from the US. The businessman immediately approached the cyber cell of Adayar police district, who conducted an inquiry and found that his debit card was cloned and products were purchased using the duplicate card online.
“We immediately placed a ‘charge back’ request with the victim’s bank and pursued the matter till the fraudulent transaction was blocked by the intermediary. We have to place the request within the golden hour of 18-20 hours for any such frauds, else the fraudsters would escape,” said Vikraman.
On September 1, the man received entire amount of `46,819. He visited the Deputy Commissioner’s office and thanked the team for their efforts. The credit goes to the cyber cells that were established in all 12 police districts of Chennai, said Commissioner Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal.