Here is how to save your money after falling victim to cyber fraud

To prevent financial loss after becoming a victim of cyber fraud, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all with major banks, payment banks and others, have operationalised a national helpline. The helpline 155260 is a reporting platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud.

The union ministry stated the facility empowers both the banks and the police, by leveraging new-age technologies for sharing online fraud related information and taking action in almost real time. “The loss of defrauded money in online cheating cases can be stopped by chasing the money trail and stopping its further flow before it is taken out of the digital ecosystem by the fraudster,” it stated.

It was launched in seven states and Union Territories (UTs) namely Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh as a soft launch. It will soon be available in other states and UTs.

Since its soft launch, in a short span of two months, helpline 155260 has been able to save more than Rs 1.85 crore, with Delhi and Rajasthan saving Rs 58 lakh and Rs 53 lakh respectively, stated the ministry.

Currently, the platform has all the major public and private sector banks onboard – State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, IndusInd, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis, Yes and Kotak Mahindra Bank. It also has all major wallets and merchants such as PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart and Amazon.

If you fall for a fraud transaction:

• Call on Helpline no. 155260. This helpline is manned and operated by the concerned State Police.

• Share the fraud transaction details and basic personal information of the caller to the police operator, who submits them in the form of a ticket on the Citizen Financial Cyber Frauds Reporting and Management System.

• The ticket gets sent to the concerned banks, wallets, merchants and so on, depending on whether they are the victim’s bank or the bank/wallet in which the defrauded money has gone.

• The concerned bank, which can now see the ticket on its dashboard on the Reporting Portal, checks the details in its internal systems.

• If the defrauded money is still available, the Bank puts it on hold, ie., the fraudster cannot withdraw the money. If the defrauded money has moved out to another Bank, the Ticket gets escalated to the next Bank to which the money has moved out. This process is repeated until the money is saved from reaching into the hands of the fraudsters.