Credit card fraud by HDFC bank employees

The HDFC bank employees get involved in credit card fraud by cheating two of the customers of their own bank. The employees of the HDFC bank in the city withdrew money using credit cards of two customers of their bank recently.

Last month the victims, Mr Sisir Ganguly, a resident of New Alipur, and Mr Ramen Roy, a resident of Uttarpara in Hooghly lodged complaints with the detective department of the city police. Mr Ganguly told the police that a total of Rs 78,000 was withdrawn from his account allegedly by some employees of the HDFC bank on 24 August last year. Mr Roy suspected that employees of the same bank withdrew Rs 1, 57,686 from his account using his credit card on the same day.

The correspondent contacted Ms Nancy Joseph deputy manager of the bank’s credit card department in Chennai on Friday for comment on the matter. Ms Joseph, after hearing details about the allegations, said she would send the response within a day through e-mail. But no response has come from bank side.

In his report Mr Ganguly, said that he had used to get phone calls from the bank executives offering some new schemes. The bank employees had advised Mr Ganguly to update his credit card to avail some new facilities. Mr Ganguly agreed to avail a scheme and decided to update his credit card. Last year on 24 August last year, a person identifying himself as Mr Arnab Sen, an employee of the HDFC bank came to his house; Mr Ganguly’s wife gave him her husband’s credit card.

The man allegedly told Mr Ganguly’s wife that the new card will be delivered to her husband within ten days. As Mr Ganguly did not get the updated credit card, he spoke to bank officials over phone on 20 September. He was told that the credit card had been fraudulently used by somebody else. When he received the bank statement for the month of September, he noticed that a total of Rs 78,000 was withdrawn from his account from the ATM counter of another private bank. The complaint letter of Mr Ganguly, which is available with The Statesman, says: “A PIN code number is required for withdrawing money from ATM and the number was generated and mailed to me by the Bank. So it is not possible for a person to know the code number without the assistance of the bank employees.”

Mr Jawed Shamim, deputy commissioner of the detective department of the city police, confirmed that a complaint has been received against the HDFC bank from Mr Ganguly. “We are looking into the allegations’’, said the officer.