According to Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) sources, it has been revealed that scammers involved in multi-millions online banking frauds, are yet to be traced and tracked down because of technical flaws due to which money of banks’ account holders in Pakistan is at stake.
Many account holders have ended up being defrauded of their money by scammers in last few months in Karachi and their money has been withdrawn using micro-finance banking cards in far-flung cities of Punjab while FIA Lahore Zone is still investigating the matter.
The agency initiated its probe into the issue when a major private bank of the country approached FIA Cyber Crime Circle in Karachi three months ago. The FIA was informed by the bank that roughly Rs 25m from bank accounts of its various account holders had been transferred through online banking system into other bank accounts without the know-how of the account holder.
Further complaints of a similar nature had been received by the agency and when the FIA team probed the matter thoroughly, it surfaced that a group of fraudsters active in the districts Raheem Yar Khan and Bahawalpur of Punjab were withdrawing money with spoof calling by using software and mobile internet data.
In an interesting disclosure by banks, they told that they had received calls from registered numbers of account holders asking them to transfer the money while the account holders claimed that they received calls from official bank numbers inquiring for personal information.
But, parties, bank officials and account holders denied making any such calls.
