Resident’s account hacked from Paris, Rs 63,000 spent on goods

A Noida resident’s account was allegedly hacked and goods worth Rs 63,000 were purchased from Paris, France.

The incident took place on September 17, but the victim, Amit Dham, did not get any alert from the bank immediately. He got to know about the transaction only 10 days later when he checked his account balance.

The Sector 39 resident alleged that he ran from pillar to post to register a case but in vain.

“I waited for three hours at the SSP office but could not meet him. I went to the Sector 39 police station but the station house officer (SHO) Zahir Khan bluntly refused to lodge an FIR, claiming that the incident had occurred in France and was thereby out of his jurisdiction,” Dham said.

Zahir Khan said, “Complaints related to cyber crime must go through the cyber crime cell of the city police. The local police have no jurisdiction and are not equipped to handle such cases. That is why a separate cell is in place.”

Dham also went to the cyber crime cell at Sector 6, which is adjacent to the SP (city) office, but the officials posted there also refused to help him, as the crime took place in a foreign country.

“I finally wrote to the bank about the incident and threatened to take the issue to court. Following this, they assured to return 99 per cent of the amount which was siphoned off from my account,” Dham said.

Bankers told Dham that his card could have been duplicated and used at a hawala merchant’s shop in Paris to procure money. However, Dham said he never used his debit card for shopping and so there was a very thin chance of the card being duplicated.

“It is not necessary for the hackers to duplicate the card to siphon off money. They can hack an account and make an offer to any hawala trader abroad to give money in lieu of articles purchased using the money in the victim’s account,” said Kishlay Chaudhary, cyber security expert and consultant to the Gautam Budh Nagar police.