Hyderabad: A techie from the city had applied for a personal loan. While collecting the loan documents including identity proofs, the executive collected an additional set of documents to apply in different banks for loans in case a bank rejected the loan.
Though his loan was rejected by all banks, two months later he received a call from a bank for a pending credit card payment. The shocked techie later found that his documents were misused by crooks who obtained a credit card on her name.
This incident is only the tip of the iceberg, say Cyberabad cybercrime police, who recently busted a major racket involving four gangs that duped banks to the tune of over Rs 2.32 crore, and added that many such gangs could be operating in the city.
The police also say they cannot act unless banks or customers identify the misuse. They also attribute such incidences to lack of proper monitoring mechanisms - banks are focussed on increasing their sales rather than protecting the data of their customers.
The police also cited the lack of a uniform policy among banks in issuing and monitoring credit cards, which lays the groundwork for fraudulent activities.
Majority of the banks including public and private sector banks are focussed only on issuing credit cards, collecting interests and other charges but pay little thought to checking out the veracity of documents and financial transactions. Banks appoint third party agencies for the processing of credit cards, who in turn appoint executives, on whose activities there is no surveillance.
“Taking advantage of these loopholes, middlemen resort to frauds, using the confidential data of customers. In some incidents, even the banks are unsure if the cards are issued to a genuine customer or a fraud.” said police. Except for the tele verification, there is no strong mechanism with the banks to check if a customer has more credit cards of any pending loans. “When compared to the high volume of sales and the profits to the banks, such frauds are peanuts, which is why there is not much effort from them to control such misuse, but the end loser are customers whose confidential data is compromised and who are troubled by banks for payment dues,” they added.
