How I lost Rs 25,000 to ATM card cloning in two seconds
Much to my dismay, my bank balance showed that Rs 25,000, the exact amount of my withdrawing limit and not Rs 15,000, had been debited. Then began my desperate measures to inform the bank and block my card.
I was chasing the daily newspaper deadline at my Mohali newsroom when my phone alerted me of two text messages at 10.06pm on Monday. The one on top read my “account debited with Rs 10,000 thru ATM (sic)”. Another message followed, informing me that Rs 5,000 had been deducted the next time around.
I did not take much time to realise that I was the latest victim of the ongoing card-cloning racket as I was in possession of my debit card that was purportedly used for the transactions.
Much to my dismay, my bank balance showed that Rs 25,000, the exact amount of my withdrawing limit and not Rs 15,000, had been debited. Then began my desperate measures to inform the bank and block my card. Punjab National Bank’s toll-free number only allowed me to do the latter as the customer service representatives couldn’t be reached.
I immediately shot a mail to the bank’s official ID (to which a response has yet to come) and got back to work, thinking how those who duped me might be partying with my hard-earned money. At 10am on Tuesday, I rushed to my home branch in Phase 1 and spent two hours trying to make the old branch manager believe that card-cloning was possible in this age and he should subscribe to my newspaper to know more about it.
Salinderjeet did not budge and showed me the stack of fraud complaints that his branch “boasted of”. I had by then got the bank statement that showed my money was withdrawn from an SBI ATM on VIP Road in Zirakpur.
One of my colleagues came to my rescue and guided me how to press for my case. Another PNB staffer, Jhhujar, sensed my panic and his fellow workers’ ignorance. He got me the required ‘claim form’.
Now I had to lodge my complaint with Punjab Police’s cyber cell, which had by now seen enough victims like me. The SHO there quickly gauged that my card must had been fiddled with at BrewMaster, a microbrewery in Mohali where police suspect some cards could have been cloned.
Little did I know that a payment made there early in May could strip me of Rs 25,000.
I quietly collected my complaint copy, headed back to PNB branch, waited for another hour before the bankers could finish their lunch, and submitted a five-page file to process the claim to my own money.
