Doc’s debit card cloned, misused 371 times

Mangalore Today News Network

Bangalore, July 09, 2014:  Reports state a Bangalore doctor found she had lost a large sum of money, when she checked her bank account after a gap of one year. Someone cloned her debit card and used it indiscriminately for a year.

The doctor, at Baptist Hospital, was shocked last week when she checked her savings account. She realised that around Rs 3.17 lakh had been debited using her card.  After enquiring with the bank, the doctor found someone had been misusing her card since 2013.

She reported the matter to the Cyber Crime Police (CCP), which discovered that a miscreant had stolen the details of her card and made 371 transactions.  CCP, which has now registered an FIR, found that the miscreant had used the cloned card to book train tickets, shop on Flipkart and recharge his/her mobile phone.

“The incident happened one and a half years ago. The victim never checked her savings account with the nationalised bank,” a senior police official told Deccan Herald .  She was not receiving the SMS alerts about the transactions. She had not used her card for a long time and was not aware of the transactions from her account.

“Preliminary investigation found that the victim must have used her debit card for some purchase. At that time, her card details on the magnetic strip would have been stolen using a skimmer. After that, there were regular transactions using the cloned card. Since there was no SMS alert, the miscreant’s shopping spree continued unabated. The thief even paid electricity bills using the cloned card,” officials informed.

Investigations revealed that the miscreant had misused the card in cities like Mysore and other surrounding areas. The police have collected CCTV footage from the places where the transactions took place.

A senior official said an awareness drive will be taken up soon in view of the rising cases of cyber crime