Debit, credit card frauds: Banks will insist on an FIR

Getting a bank loan or credit card, buying an insurance policy or investing in a mutual fund is very easy today, given the several points-of-sale available. These include agents, online intermediaries and the bank/ insurance company/ fund house directly. But, what happens when you have to lodge a complaint with regard to deficiency of service or mis-selling? Should you approach the agent/intermediary or the company directly? What is the time-frame for the complaint to be resolved?

In addition to complaints on deficiency, insurance complaints include fraudulent calls claiming to be representatives of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and offering of policies of different insurers with various benefits.

In case of banking products, the common complaints include misbehaviour of collection agents for recovery on overdue outstanding credit cards/ loans, delay in resolving debit/credit card complaints pertaining to billing or disputed transactions, dispute/communication relating to interest rate on loans and advances, says Anand Aras, CEO, Banking Codes and Standards Board of India.

Mis-selling complaints include those saying the agent had promised a certain amount of dividend while selling the MF, but the actual payout was lower. Or the agent had not mentioned the lock-in period while selling the fund, says an official of a fund house. 

Read Source

US indicts 52 Indians in call centre scam: All you need to know

Here is everything you need to know: 

1.  The extraction scheme scared Americans into paying nonexistent tax dues through threatening phone call. sing information obtained from data brokers and other sources, call centre operators allegedly called potential victims in the US and impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

2.  The scam was primarily run out of a network of call centres in Ahmedabad.The five Ahmedabad-based call centres that made calls to people living in the US are Hglobal, Call Mantra, Worldwide Solution, Zoriion Communications and Sharma BPO Services.

3.  The US Senate Aging Committee, that studies issues related to older Americans, received more than 1,100 calls from senior citizens across the country on its fraud hotline in 2015.The most common complaint reported to the fraud hotline continues to be the IRS impersonation scam.

4.  United States will be seeking the extradition of those based in India and warned others engaged in similar schemes.

5.  The indictment accuses the U.S. arm of the network of grabbing the cash off the prepaid cards and then laundering the money. If victims agreed to pay, the call centres would turn to a network of US-based co-conspirators to liquidate and launder the extorted funds by purchasing prepaid debit cards which were often registered with misapproporiated information. The second method used were wire transfers which were directed by the criminal associates using fake names and fraudulent identifications.

6.  The call centers also ran scams in which victims were offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee.

7.  The case involves more than 15,000 victims and more than $300 million in stolen money. Authorities said the bust was the largest single domestic law enforcement action yet in this scam.

8.  The names and personal information of the potential targets were purchased through data brokers. "Runners" would then be responsible for retrieving the payments of the scammed funds and then depositing them in bank accounts. The callers would use information about their victims they learned through the internet to present a facade of authenticity, and the number that appeared on a caller ID seemed to come from a legitimate US government agency.

9.  The justice department said this network was busted in a three-year-long investigation. The indictment was returned by a grand jury in a Texas court on October 19, following which arrests were made.

10.  The justice department also found evidence of the use of “hawala” of illegal money transfer.

According to several reports, an 85-year-old woman of California was conned into paying $12,300 by one of the call centres for some “fictitious tax violations”.
With inputs from Agencies

Read Source