Fraudsters hack into policewomen’s bank accounts

Suspects deprive 15 victims of Rs3m through ATM withdrawals

DIJKOT:

Three million rupees have been withdrawn by some fraudsters from the bank accounts of 15 policewomen.

The victims include the SHOs of Women Police and the Rail Bazaar Police Station respectively. The other victims are all of the rank of sub-inspectors.  

One of the victims was in charge of the Anti-Harassment Cell.

The victims had their accounts at different branches of a single bank.

The policewomen have registered their complaints with the FIA, the CPO and the respective bank managers.

In the applications given to the officers on behalf of all the affected policewomen, it was stated that when they learnt about the unauthorized withdrawals from their respective bank accounts, they immediately contacted the branches concerned as well as the head office of the bank in Karachi for help.

The SHO of the Rail Bazaar Police Station, Farah Batul, said that they hadn’t had the slightest clue of how money got deducted from their respective bank accounts.

She said she can’t stop wondering how could anyone get access to their confidential data.

She said that they had given applications to FIA and the CPO to investigate into the matter.

According to a report published on these pages recently, the Cybercrime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) received 7,018 complaints from across Punjab of fraudsters trying to obtain their bank account and ATM passwords during the past eight months.

The wing’s officials had told The Express Tribune that they had arrested 519 suspects over such complaints but were still receiving a large number of applications related to online fraud.

The officials lamented shortage of staff impeding investigations into the bank account frauds and conceded that they had not been able to arrest any ATM hacker yet.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2022.