A regular day at the office and my colleague’s phone rings at around 2.30 pm with an STD prefix +91. Suddenly he signals us and we gathered around his desk. It was a hoax call!
The man on another end with a North Indian accent introduces himself as Amit Sharma:
Amit Sharma: Hello Sir, I am calling from All ATM service centre, Sir your ATM card needs to be re-verified or else it will be blocked in few days.
Colleague: What is your name?
Amit Sharma: I am calling from the ATM service centre
Colleague: Where is your office?
Amit Sharma: It is in Bangalore
Colleague: Please give me your address? I will come there and rectify.
Amit Sharma (Cross questioning): Do you want to keep your ATM card working or is it ok if it is been blocked?
Colleague: No you tell me you name, number and address, Ill note it down and call you back.
Amit Sharma: The number is on your mobile you can call me on this number.
Colleague: Is this your number?
Amit Sharma: Yes
Colleague: Where are you from?
Amit Sharma: From Bangalore, from this service centre. Our ATM service centre is for all India ATM cards.
Colleague: How is that possible?
Amit Sharma (Creating Pressure): As your card is not verified in 15 min your card will be blocked!
Colleague: Do what you feel like! (Phone Disconnected)
The journalistic instigating in me took toil – I took the number from my colleague and dialed him again from the office landline. I told him that I had got a call from this number.
A man on the other end said, “Good morning Ma’am, my name is Amit Sharma and this is ‘All India ATM’ centre.
Acknowledging him I asked him why he needs my ATM number, He said, “We need to verify your ATM debit card or else it will be blocked within three days”, to which I confirmed and informed him of the expiry date of my ATM, which is almost a decade later. Amit Sharma said, “Yes but all the ATM cards are being verified for security purpose.”
I asked him what he wanted to know. Amit Sharma said, “Ma’am, May I know which card are you using? VISA or Master? I said, I think its Visa but I don’t have the card right now. I then, in a very friendly manner told him that he could give me his address and I will drop by at his office. I also tried to ask his personal number but Mr Sharma was in no mood of divulging anything.
He said, “No ma’am, I cannot do that”, I then told him that I will call him late in the evening after work and give him the number. He said that he will be in the office until 8 but will wait for my call till 8:30; I obliged and dropped the call.
The moment my colleague picked the call he knew it was a hoax, as there were messages circulated about such instances of people being duped by a caller stating to be calling from the so called ‘All India ATM’ office. They do not ask you to divulge information about your PIN, however, they tell you to narrate the entire ATM card number / the expiry date / the CVV number written on the card. These three essentials are good enough to make huge online payments.
The number from which I got a call was +919709895824, when I googled the number it showed that it belonged from Bihar / Jharkhand.
When NewsKarnataka brought the incident to the notice of District SP Sharanappa, he said, “you can bring it to notice of the local police but it is an initial stage and an attempt to cheat case can be registered. However, in such cases what you can do is be aware of the circumstance and prevent it from happening, which is the best solution, as conmen will keep coming with new tactics”.
Earlier, addressing a press meet in the city on August 28, SP Sharanappa said that the number of such cases of cheating is on the rise. He said that such spontaneous messages about lottery or emails should not be entertained. “People must use their common sense and be alert before reverting back to anything”, he added.
“In a virtual world anybody can be anyone they want to be, thus it is difficult to track down an individual”, he said. When asked as to why the culprits can’t be traced through bank accounts he said, “It’s difficult to do so with the
number of fake accounts created and closed every day”, he added.
Speaking about another case he said that recently an IT professional lost Rs 20 lakh to a lottery scam. The youth from Kolar, received an SMS in November 2014 stating that he had won Rs one crore.
Since then, in a process of acquiring the money he was asked to give out some personal information and deposit money in parts in various banks – which has summed up to 20 lakhs, and still feels he will get the lottery amount.
He also urged the public to ignore such unsolicited messages about lottery received on phone or by email. “People are being easily fooled by these lottery scams. The media should also create awareness on this,” he said.
