Mumbai: In the latest bank fraud, salary accounts of some Mumbai Police personnel maintained with Axis Bank have been hacked and the amounts withdrawn in Greece.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Satyanarayan Chaudhary, who is now heading a team formed to investigate the matter, told Gulf News, “around 25 customers’ accounts of Axis Bank have been hacked and out of these were eight policemen.”
He said the hacking has been done “randomly and Mumbai Police have not been exclusively targeted.” Mumbai Police received complaints from its staff after they found deductions in their accounts.
It appears that debit and ATM cards were likely to have been cloned and the heist carried out.
Chaudhary said, “We are in the process of filing a First Information Report.” Meanwhile, Axis Bank has been asked to investigate the fraud and submit its report to the police team.
The policemen realised their accounts were hacked when they noticed the deductions in their bank accounts.
Though the officer did not say the exact amount of money that was lost by all the victims, initial reports stated that Rs1.3 million was withdrawn through ATMs in Greece during the last two months.
Some of the policemen in the city had received SMS messages that cash has been withdrawn from their Axis Bank accounts in Euro currency.
Policemen had visited the nearest bank to cross check and found cash has indeed been withdrawn from their accounts. Many, as a precaution, withdrew all the money from their accounts as a result.
Recently, many such fraudulent withdrawals abroad of local customers holding accounts in India have come to light and Mumbai Police have been investigating the cases.
