Public awareness in relation to defrauding individuals through scam calls, text messages, email messages and social media networks.
In recent times, a rapid increase in the number of complaints filed by aggrieved parties has been observed in relation to defrauding money from individuals by giving false information through fraudulent phone calls, text messages, e-mail messages and social media networks, promising to direct them to foreign employment or asking them to pay customs duties to receive parcels containing various valuable goods.
Therefore, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) hereby emphasizes to the public not to deposit money into the bank accounts of unknown parties or remit money through other means based on the above information, without proper verification.
Further, the scammers who engage in such practices, may request the following information from you in order to proceed with such transactions: • Personal Identification Number (PIN); • Card Verification Values (CVV) used to authenticate payment cards as stated on the back of the cards; • One-Time Passwords (OTP) used to authenticate transactions; • User IDs, Passwords and OTPs used in mobile banking/internet banking.
Therefore, the FIU further emphasizes to the public that such confidential information should not be shared with any third party and to be vigilant of such scams. Also, providing such details will surely make you/your family member/your close friend, a victim of a financial scam. If you receive these types of phone calls or text messages, please inform the FIU through 011-2477125 or 011-2477509.
The Central Bank has received information regarding several types of financial frauds and scams being operated through social media, and Internet-based applications. Recently, an increase of these types of scams has been observed.
Most of these scams are conducted through easy loan schemes that attract the public. During such fraudulent loan approval processes, the fraudsters lure the public to share confidential customer information such as their bank account numbers and the customer’s personal identification numbers.
The fraudsters then use such confidential information to access customer accounts and steal customers’ money.
The public is reminded to obtain real-time notification services, such as SMS alerts from their Banks or non-bank financial institutions such as finance companies, so that they would become aware of any fraudulent activity that takes place using their accounts, instantly.
The Central Bank strongly advises the public to be vigilant about these frauds and scams and not to share any confidential information, especially account usernames, passwords, PINs, OTPs or other information required for account verification, with anyone.
Such information must be used only by the customer who owns the account. Customers must also carefully read the terms and conditions of any financial product or service, before accepting them.
