Retired officer of SBI, Silchar’s Debashish Aditya’s net banking hacked; Rs 3.14 lakh conned 

A former officer of the State Bank of India, Silchar’s Debashish Aditya got a call last evening. He was told that the call is from BSNL and his number needs an update without which he won’t be able to pay his bills. Now it is unclear if it was a coincidence or the caller actually got to know that Debashish Aditya was facing trouble paying his BSNL bill since morning.

The caller asked for some documents to which Debashish Aditya said no. Had he cut the call here, he would have got saved, but he didn’t. Instead, he continued with the conversation. He was asked to make a payment of Rs 11 to his own BSNL number following which the update will be done. The bsnl.rechargecube…in/….. was the link sent from 6289007087. Now since the link starts with BSNL Debashish Aditya clicked on it and paid Rs 11 using net banking. The payment was successful but that is the last time he could use his net banking. After that, his password got changed.

An aware officer of Debashish Aditya’s stature got conned. The caller was a miscreant and he cloned that fake BSNL bill-pay link to get the user id and password of the net banking profile. The miscreant immediately changed the mobile number, so, Aditya stopped getting any messages from the bank. The miscreant transferred money to various Yes Bank accounts and a total of Rs 3,14,000 has been transferred.

Aditya rushed to the bank to block his account and also filed an FIR at Silchar Sadar Police Station. Rechargecube is a fake mobile recharge portal that is owned by R-Cube Planet, a company registered under the Companies Act. This company pays money to google and gets to rank its link on top. It is a common scammer and yet the link never gets pulled down. Whenever someone types BSNL recharge or any recharge, the link appears on top, at times even higher than the original company link. This happens as the Recharge Cube pays money to google in the form of advertisement to rank higher. This advertising option is provided by Google to all the dot coms, however, should it provide the option to a known scammer is something that the company must contemplate.

Also, in recent cases, first a professor of GC College and now an officer of the bank, it has been observed that the scammers are getting to crack the tough nuts – the aware-educated lot. Debashish Aditya said, since he was trying to pay the BSNL bill since morning, it was in his head throughout. “What if the phone stops working amidst the pandemic?” is something that was bothering him a lot. Also, his wife is a banker and she was not at home when he received the call, alone at home, he was continuously thinking about the bill. That is why when he received the call, he thought it is a legitimate call from BSNL’s customer care. The more he spoke with the man on the other side, he kept getting hypnotised and did exactly what the other person asked him to do. This happened in the case of the GC College professor too.

State Bank of India’s phishing department in Mumbai said it will cooperate with the Police in its investigation, however, what is critical is other banks must do the same. Money was transferred from Debashish Aditya’s account to one account that goes by the name of “Shah” in Allahabad Bank, a Pay-TM account connected with the Yes Bank, Bank of Baroda account. Now, how Cachar Police manages to track these accounts and if it succeeds in tracing the criminal, remains to be seen.