12/28/2020

How cyber criminals clone ATM cards, fleece bank customers of savings

The Nation

The heinous practice by cyber criminals of cloning automated teller machine (ATM) cards and using them to defraud unsuspecting bank customers is on the rise. Many bank customers have lost their life savings to the fraudsters even when their ATM cards are not lost or stolen. You also risk all you have laboured to save if you are unmindful of where and how you use your ATM cards, INNOCENT DURU reports.

• Bank officials responsible for most frauds – ICT, legal experts

• Ex-NBA chief recalls how bank duplicated client’s corporate account for fraudsters

• How to identify compromised ATM, PoS machines

On November 3, Ayo, a freelance journalist, was in the comfort of his room drawing a list of what he would need for his impending wedding and to set up a business for his wife to be. For these, he relied mainly on the money he had saved from his toils over the years.

But while he was busy drawing the items, his phone was being hit by messages in quick succession, but he was too engrossed with the task at hand to be distracted by them. By the time it occurred to him to check the short messages on his phone, he realised, to his chagrin, that they were debit alerts from his bank. The money he had banked on for the execution of his plans had been pilfered from his account. Surprisingly, the message in the debit alert indicated that the withdrawal had occurred two days earlier (November 1).

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