mumbai

Updated: Jun 11, 2018 11:46 IST

In a rare case, the Andheri police are investigating a cyber fraud, where a woman lost ₹40,700 after her ATM chip-card was cloned and money withdrawn from different ATMs.

However, as the woman was not at fault and had not shared her one time password (OTP), the private bank refunded her money within days of the incident.

Cybercrime fraud with regard to chip-cards is a rare occurrence as most of the debit card cloning cases is of magnetic cards, police said.

According to Andheri police, the incident occurred on May 30 around 5.10pm.

The complainant, who works in a corporate firm, requesting anonymity, told HT, “I have a chip card. I learnt from the bank that the card data was leaked at some place, where I had used it. I am assuming the accused observed my pin code while I entered it on the machine. The money was withdrawn at Thane.”

The next day, she approached the Andheri police station and lodged a written complaint (HT has a copy of the complaint).

The complaint states that she was in her office at Andheri (East), when she started receiving money withdrawal messages from the bank. “Between 5.14pm to 5.18 pm, six withdrawals were done at different ATMs. A total of ₹40,700 was withdrawn,” she said.

The bank asked her to file a police complaint. Following this, an internal investigation was conducted, which found her claim to be true and hence her money was returned to her.

Cyber advocate Vicky Shah told HT that this is a rare occurrence and he has not come across any such case in Mumbai, in the recent past.

“Shimmer is a device that can be used to skim chip-based credit and debit cards. This device is available online. The preventive action is to follow the same methods one follows for magnetic cards.”