Fraudsters pose as Bahrain immigration officials, target expats

Manama : A dopting a novel modus operandi to swindle money from expatriates in the Kingdom, phone scammers have put on the garb of ‘immigration officials.’ In the latest incidents, they called up expats posing as ‘officials’ from the Immigration Department and tried to extract money by convincing them.

Bijo, an Indian expat, received a call yesterday from a person, who claimed to be an ‘immigration official.’ The call came from +973 followed by Bahrain’s immigration office number as shown in the eGovernment website contacts under Ministries and entities section.

The ‘official’ then demanded payment of a specific amount as fine from Bijo and threatened that he would be detained if not paid. To his surprise, the caller revealed Bijo’s passport number and date of birth. 

The scammer told Bijo that he had not filled up the ‘alien number’ in the immigration form, which was given to him at the time of his arrival in Bahrain recently. Bijo said he was not aware of an ‘alien number.’ But the scammer informed him that it was a grave fault, which could be corrected by paying a fine. 

The scammer then asked about his personal information like full name, address, whether he is alone, occupation, CPR and pan card numbers. 

Unfazed by his talks, Bijo queried the caller’s legitimacy. Then he again started to threaten the expat. “When I questioned the authenticity of the call, the scammer got irritated and started to aggressively threaten me,” Bijo told DT News. 

But when he realised that Bijo was unperturbed, the scammer hung up. 

In another incident, an expat from the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, Narayanan, received an international call from a number starting with +92. The scammer introduced himself that he was calling from Batelco’s main office. He informed that Narayanan had been chosen as winner in a raffle draw worth BD15,000.

Then he asked for Narayanan’s bank account number and ATM Card number. “The caller gave me the number of a cheque and asked me to disclose some personal details which I denied,” Narayanan said. 

Meanwhile, Batelco has issued a warning to its customers to be on the qui vive regarding a spate of fraudulent calls informing customers that they had won a large sum of money. 

The calls are being generated from a variety of Bahrain and international mobile numbers. A number of Batelco’s customers have been in touch with the company to enquire about the validity of the information. 

“A number of our customers have received calls with the callers claiming to be Batelco management, and advising our customers that they have won a cash prize. The callers are requesting for personal information such as name, bank account details and CPR numbers to arrange payment of the money,” said Batelco’s Chief Marketing Officer Mike Stanford.

“We strongly advise our customers that these are fraudulent calls. Batelco will never ask for bank account details, passwords or any personal details of this nature,” he added.