MUMBAI: A Tardeo-based businessman opened his e-mail recently to find messages telling him that his wife’s credit card had been used in over 20 transactions within 12 hours across four continents to run up a bill of over Rs 2 lakh. The family was in the city at that time.

After the shock, 51-year-old Rikin Choksi felt as if he had run into a wall—the issuing bank was way less than helpful and the police made him run around for 21 days before filing an FIR. Finally, the BKC cyber police registered a case on January 4, but the bank is yet to get back to Choksi. He doesn’t even know if the transactions were made online or with a fake card.

Choksi claims the card has never been used abroad. In 2012, only four transactions were made in India with it.

At 8.30am on December 14, Choksi logged into his email account and found alerts from the private bank about the 20 transactions between December 13 and 14 across Australia, Hongkong, the US and several countries in Europe at apparel, computer, pharmaceutical and departmental stores, to buy airline tickets and procure services and also direct marketing totalling Rs 2.06 lakh. He or his wife hadn’t received any SMS alert about the spend varying from .01 Australian dollar to buy medicines, $607.96 in a departmental store and Euro 817.01 to buy airline tickets.

“I was annoyed with the sub-standard services that the bank offered; worse was the experience with Tardeo police, who tried to dodge me and said ‘they cannot probe cases where the card fraud amount crosses Rs 2 lakh’,” said Choksi, adding that he was asked to go to the cyber cell or cyber police.

“When I approached the cyber police in BKC, they sent me to the Tardeo police, who, in turn, again made me go back to BKC, where finally the FIR was lodged under IPC sections for cheating and forgery and under the IT Act for identity theft and impersonation. I never received any status update from the cops. When I called senior officers at the cyber police, they said the bank was not cooperating with the fraud transaction details and they are waiting to get it before starting the probe,” said Choksi.

Tardeo police senior inspector Ajendrasingh Thakur said till December 2012, they were short on expertise in handling cyber crime cases. So Choksi could have been directed to the Cyber Crime Police Station in BKC.

The bank’s spokesperson said they had sent SMS & email alerts on December 14 for all the transactions on Choksi’s wife’s card. They tried to contact her to verify the large number of transactions, but she was unreachable. Out of the 20 disputed transactions, only 11 were billed. The customer has received refund for two. The remaining nine have been raised as dispute with VISA.

“The bank has given temporary credit of Rs 2,05,023 for the 9 disputed transactions in customer’s credit card account. The final resolution to this dispute is expected from VISA on February 11,” said the official.