Beware: Several cases of fraud calls from alleged ‘banks’ reported in Bhatkal

Bhatkal: (Bhatkallys News Bureau) Several people in Bhatkal have reported incidents of receiving fraud calls allegedly from banks, seeking details of their Debit and ATM cards in last few days. Unfortunately the incidents have only been reported on local social media groups and not a single one has so far been reported to local police.

Last week, a person in Bhatkal received a call wherein a person introduced himself as a bank employee and sought his ATM card details including 16-digit card number and 3-digit CVV number saying that his ATM card was blocked and that he would help him unlock it after ‘verification’ of card number and CVV number.

Luckily, the person was quick enough to sense something fishy about the caller and decided to disconnect the call after getting into a verbal argument with the caller. But another victim of such callers, a woman from Bhatkal was not lucky enough and passed her card details to the caller.

Within few minutes of ‘successfully verifying’ her card details to the caller, the woman’s account was robbed off seven thousand rupees that were there in the account. But by then it was too late and there was nothing she could have done about it. Absence of any male member of the family in town, the woman could not register complaint in this regard with the local police.

On Wednesday, two more such cases were reported on local WhatsApp group complaining about similar callers and audio recordings of the calls. Local police on Friday added that they haven’t received any complaint in this regard so far.

Speaking to Bhatkallys.com new ASP of Bhatkal Nikhil Bullavar confirmed that no such case was reported to the police and urged locals to be careful in dealing with such callers.

“Such cases should be reported to the banks as well as the police but we haven’t received any such complaints so far. It is important we don’t share our banking details to anybody” he said.

Nikhil further added that the police department will organise awareness campaigns in this regard to create awareness among people against such frauds.