Fake Website of Reserve Bank of India – The height of Online Scams

            Reserve Bank of India on 26 May 2014 issued a Press Release warning about a fake website in its name. At the time of posting this article, Google has classified the respective website as a Phishing website and blocked access to it.

There is no information as to how many Indians were gullible enough to apply on-line for “RBI Savings Account”.

The website in order to open the accounts was asking from the internet surfers their phone numbers and also phone numbers of next of kin. The phone numbers so harvested would be valuable tools for further fooling the public.

Legal Audit of title documents in respect of large value loan accounts in Indian Banks

A new type of regular audit has been introduced by Reserve Bank of India i.e Legal Audit.

Reserve Bank of India vide Notification No RBI /2012-13/524 BS.FrMC.BC.No.7/23.04.001/2012-13 dt.June 07, 2013 has advised Banks:

• To subject the title deeds and other documents in respect of all credit exposures of Rs5 crore and above to periodic legal audit
• re-verification of title deeds with relevant authorities as part of regular audit exercise, till the loan stands fully repaid.

 

Further, the banks have to furnish a review note to its Board/Audit Committee of the Board at quarterly intervals.

Earlier, vide para 3.1 of our circular DBS.CO. FrMC. BC .No. 11/ 23.0.001/ 2010-11 dated June 30, 2011 banks had  to put in place a system wherein the concurrent auditors were required to look into and report, inter alia, on the genuineness of the title documents especially for large value loans.

The fresh requirement is in addition to the scrutiny of the Title Deeds by the Concurrent Auditors. The normal practice of Auditors is to verify the documents relating to the Audit Period only. Normally, the audit period starts from the last audit date to the present date.

Hence, Title Deeds audited during previous audit periods were not audited once again.

RBI in a study of large value frauds, particularly when the branches were also under concurrent audit, has found that large numbers of frauds were perpetrated on account of submission of forged documents by the borrowers. Hence the concept of repetitive audit for Large Value Loans has been mandated by RBI.  It is hoped by such an exercise the NPA rate will be reduced

Related articles

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Fraud costs ICICI Prudential Rs 90 lakhs

 

 

ICICI Prudential life insurance company has lodged a complaint with police stating that a large number of if policy holders were contacted by scamsters, who tricked them into surrendering their ICICI prudential insurance policies and caused a loss of Rs90 lacs to the insurance company.

In the last few years, a new breed of scamsters has emerged in the country. They specialize in convincing existing policy holders to surrender their policies promising monetary gains.

Broadly, the nefarious acts can be classified into two categories.

a)      Surrender the existing policy and opt for a new policy

b)      Pay some monies to rectify/modify the existing policy terms and conditions.

Details of the below fraud:

a)      Policy holders’ details stolen by the fraudsters.

b)      Policy holders contacted with the details

c)       Policy holders encouraged to surrender their policies

d)      Hundreds of calls made

e)      712 complaints received by ICICI prudential insurance

f)       The number might be still higher as all the affected policy holders would not have contacted ICICI Prudential

g)      ICICI Prudential claims that “eight insurance policies have been discontinued and 48 policies have been surrendered by our customers, resulting into a loss of Rs 90,93,188 was the loss to the company” due to these illegal actions though it was able to satisfy most of its customers and averted losses that could have incurred.

h)      Calls were made allegedly on behalf of the company giving false promises of bonus, scholarship etc to genuine policy holders by tele-calling and inducing them to buy new policies of different agencies.

 

 

 

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ATM Trick to dupe Banks – No, you cannot try it now!!!!

 More about this can be read in this article dt.22/06/2012

 The following is the Modus operandi

* The member of the public, open Bank accounts and obtain obtain ATM cards.

 * The ATM cards were used to withdraw money only from ATMs of Federal Bank of India.

 * In one transaction containing withdrawal of Rs 10,000, the accused would deliberately leave the last note (eg Rs 100) inside the ATM machine.

 * Since the machine generated and flashed a message of “failed transaction”, the accused used to claim the refund of entire Rs 10,000 from the private banks.

 * While the private banks used to refund the amounts, the Federal Bank of India was denied the refund of the actual amount withdrawn (Rs 9,900) because the private banks used to rely on the “failed transaction” slip/message.

 The increase in complaints regarding part disbursement/failed disbursement was noticed during 2011, and in January 12 Shri G.Padmanabhan, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India in a speech,

mentioned about defrauding the ATM System, by uniquely Indian approaches i.e – forcibly holding on to a few pieces of notes in ATM machines that has cash retraction system- (i.e. cash getting sucked back by the machine, if not removed within a specified tome, often seconds), and then claiming non receipt of cash.

To curb the misuse, NPCI had proposed to remove this functionality from all machines.

The decision was taken after a pilot proved extremely effective in curbing such misuse.

Since than many Banks in India have removed the Cash Retraction functionality from their ATM machines eg Axis Bank.

 After the news of the amount lost by Federal Bank in the ATM fraud, all Banks will be taking immediate steps to disable the Cash Retract facility.

 Better Late than Never