Beware! That loan call will clean up your bank account

HYDERABAD: Next time you get a call from an overzealous ‘financial executive’, congratulating you for a ‘pre-approved’ personal loan of Rs 5 lakh, beware. It could well be a fraudster on the prowl, trying to siphon off the big bucks from your bank account.

According to city cops, at least 10 such cases of loan scams have come to their notice over the last two months. Moving over the OTP fraud – most common until now – cops say that these offenders have now resorted to luring prospective preys through text messages and calls. Their typical modus operandi: to send an SMS (or call) the victim and inform him/her about a loan – always Rs 5 lakh or more – that’s been already approved, and needs a last few details to be sanctioned. In some cases, the victims are asked to maintain a certain bank balance to ensure that the EMI payments – once the loan is sanctioned – go through smoothly.



Case in point, 25-year-old Naresh (name changed) who works as a delivery boy to earn his living. He lost Rs 32,000 after fraudsters, posing as Mahindra Finance employees, called him and lured him into giving away his bank account details. He was told that his loan worth Rs 5 lakh was sanctioned as per the documents. The caller even explained the EMI options and asked Naresh to maintain a balance of Rs 32,000, which was equal to two EMIs. Soon after the victim deposited the amount, it was withdrawn.

In another case, a 30-year-old private employee lost about Rs 70,000 to a similar scam. In this instance, the tele-caller from a fake private finance company, convinced him to avail of the loan, by paying a processing charge and an application fee.

“With not many people falling into the one-time-password trap anymore, fraudsters have found this new way of cheating people. Sometimes, to make the call the call sound genuine, they give details about the victim’s other loans. The fraudsters either ask for their bank account details or ask them to transfer money to different accounts stating various refundable charges,” said S Harinath, additional commissioner of police (cyber-crime), Rachakonda.

Police fear that the staff of big finance companies often have a role to play in these frauds. “It is likely that some employees of these firms sell the data to make some quick bucks on the side,” a senior police official said.