A person got the shock of his lifetime when he received an SMS which left him in utter astonish. The SMS had the information of Rs. 44 crore being deposited into his bank account. Even more amazingly, he didn’t have any account with that account number and on top of that, he didn’t even have an account in that public sector bank.
The name of the person has not been revealed keeping in mind the security reasons; nevertheless, his story will leave you surprised cum shocked.
How can this type of mistake happen? How can anybody else’s account be linked with the telephone number of some other person? To know more in detail, read out the whole story in his words:
I’m not a multi-millionaire, but like several others, I do wish to be one. For the last two months, however, a PSU bank has fulfilled my dream, albeit temporarily.
The bank has been bombarding me with SMSs, with eye-popping daily transactions that run into crores. The account, incidentally, is a savings account and not a ‘current’ one. I had first dismissed it to be a technology glitch. Maybe someone had entered my cellphone number in the banking system by mistake, I had thought. So my first complain was to the Punjab National Bank’s helpline number. I lodged a verbal complaint, and later, when the matter wasn’t resolved, a formal complaint. The SMSs, however, kept pouring in.
Every time that I called the bank, first to draw attention towards the SMSs and then to establish the fact that none in my family (and their immediate predecessors) ever had a PNB account anywhere in India, the caller at the other end patiently heard me out, apologized slightly and promised to rectify the glitch. It never happened.
The SMSes had a pattern to it. It referred to transactions in one particular bank account – PNB Ac No XXXX XXXX 0000 2162. For the crores stashed in the account, the `original’ account owner seemed to withdraw only a few hundreds and thousands by ATMs (and always a non-PNB Bank ATM). For example, on January 12, a little after 2pm, Rs 100 was withdrawn from the ATM, leaving a balance of Rs 44.70 crore. Ten days later, on January 22, again a little after 2pm, Rs 2600 was withdrawn. The balance the showed Rs 4.7 crore.PNB, however, didn’t send SMSs of transactions that left only Rs 4.7 crore from a whopping Rs 44.7 crore. This indicated my phone number was clearly being used to trigger alerts only for low-value ATM transactions.
It appeared that a SIM bearing the same number I use was `purchased’ from a different mobile-service provider on July 8, 2014.
It is baffling to unravel, how can the same savings account be linked to two cellphones? One, for argument’s sake, to the original account hol der obviously for the high-value over-the-counter transactions or cheque transactions. The other to me for low-value ATM transactions. It was such questions that prompted me to lodge a formal complaint with the Cyber Crime Police Station at the Howrah Police Commissionerate. What I was told there was equally puzzling. It appeared that a SIM bearing the same number I use was `purchased’ from a different mobile-service provider on July 8, 2014. The number, however, was largely inactive. People in the know claim this is an impossibility. It, of course, did happen.
For the moment, however, I have got some respite from the incessant SMSs. Perhaps, the police did what my helpless pleas to the bank couldn’t. The flipside, `unfortunately’, is that I have stopped being a multi-millionaire. But not being one, perhaps, has its advantages.
Police is investigating the case. I will forward the police complaint to the RBI, too, for intimation. The experience, however, has left me with an uncanny fear. A fear that simply refuses to go away.”
Source: Times Of India
