LUCKNOW: An incident of fraudulent diversion of refunds meant for Amazon customers by hackers to their own accounts came to light in Lucknow on Wednesday. The legal cell of Amazon filed a complaint, on the basis of which an FIR was lodged against unknown hackers at Vibhuti Khand police station.
A large number of Amazon customers had been complaining that refunds were not being credited to their bank accounts. On getting multiple complaints of the same nature, the company got an internal audit done and it came to light that the refund money of around 1,500 customers had been diverted by hackers into their own accounts.
The cyber cell of Lucknow Police is now looking into the matter.
Sources in Amazon's legal cell said it was for the first time such an incident was reported in the company and it started getting complaints on a regular basis almost every week from the month of June. An audit revealed that the incident was happening with those customers who used to give 'Cash on Delivery.' The customers who wanted to replace products were requested to add their bank accounts so that refund amount could be credited directly into their account.
The hackers used to get access to the phone number of the customers and call them impersonating company officials. They would asked them to reveal their One-Time-Password, as soon as it was generated and then replace the bank details of that customer with their own. Once the delivery boy would come to take back the parcel, the refund amount would be credited to the account of the hackers instead of customers.
Amazon said the siphoned amount was not known till now.