KOCHI: As more people have started using smartphones, fraudsters have started adopting new tricks to siphon money from innocent people. The latest to fall in their snare is a Thrissur native woman who lost money from her bank account and credit card after being approached by an unknown person to activate her new credit card. Police have registered a case and started a probe into the incident.
It was on February 16 that the 43-year-old woman received a new SBI credit card. On the same day, she was contacted by a person claiming to be a bank official. He offered to help her activate her credit card.
“Unaware of such cheating, she revealed the credit card and bank account details to the person over the phone,” a police official said.
The accused later said that for completion of credit card activation and its usage, an application named QS Support has to be installed on the mobile phone. As directed, the victim too installed the app before she received messages that Rs 3.21 lakhs were debited from her bank account on seven transactions and Rs 48,000 taken from her credit card.
“The app which the complainant installed on her mobile phone was a remote access application. This allowed the fraudster to access the victim’s mobile phone. He obtained all the required passwords and OTPs to complete the transactions. Even though the victim approached the bank, they were helpless and advised her to lodge a police complaint,” the police official said.
However, the police are still puzzled about how the accused person learned that the victim had received a new credit card. Police suspect the victim might have searched for new credit cards on fake websites alerting fraudsters about a new prey. “The cyber fraudsters approaching people for credit card activation is a new method.
We suspect that no recent case of similar nature has been reported in Kerala in recent days. A probe is conducted based on the mobile phone from which the victim received the call and about bank accounts to which the amount was transferred from the victim’s account,” the police official said.