Bahrain resident and Covid warrior latest prey to online fraud

TDT | Manama     

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Staff Reporter

An expatriate nurse, who was recruited during the peak of the pandemic as a Covid warrior over a year ago, has lost BD2,950 to online banking scammers.

Indian national Minimol Binu, 45, employed at Salmaniya Medical Complex, is the latest victim of online banking fraud in Bahrain.

Speaking to The Daily Tribune, she said the scammers took away the money that was obtained as a loan from a leading bank.

“I was working in Mumbai, India, when I was recruited by the Kingdom’s Ministry of Health over a year ago. Ever since my arrival in this beautiful country, I have been enjoying my role as a team member of the national healthcare force. But what happened now is something I am finding hard to believe!”

Minimol said she submitted her documents for the loan with the bank on May 25 and the loan got sanctioned on June 2. “I was in Kerala, my home state in India, when the loan was transferred to my account on June 2. I was planning to use the loaned amount to repair and renovate my house, which was partially destroyed during the floods that wreaked havoc in the state a few years ago.

“On June 2, a bank employee who helped me obtain the loan, rang me up to inform me that the amount had been transferred to my account. The same day I received a call from an anonymous number and the person on the other side claimed to be a CID official.

“I disconnected the phone abruptly realizing it was someone attempting a fraudulent act.” On June 5, Minimol was shocked to see consecutive messages in her mobile from the bank, showing frequent transfers of BD1,000, BD500, BD1,000 and BD450 in a space of a few hours.

Upon calling the bank employee, Minimol would realise that the scammers have got away with BD2,950 out of the total BD5,306 obtained as loan amount. The bank account was immediately frozen. However, the bank staff are clueless as to what has happened, Minimol adds.

A complaint has been filed with the CID Department. The Daily Tribune has been carrying many reports in the last few months about fraudsters targeting the online banking and financial transaction network in the Kingdom.

The published articles carried the plight of many citizens and expatriates, who together lost thousands of Bahraini dinars to the scammers. Most of the victims have launched a complaint with the police department, pleading for an intense probe into the matter.

It is learnt that many banks are flooded with calls from frantic customers saying they have been conned out of their money by scammers after hacking their bank accounts or fund transfer system. Ajesh Panchavila Gopinath, a Bahrain resident, who lost in excess of BD850 to the scammers, even threatened his bank of filing a criminal complaint with courts, for the former’s alleged inability to carry out a probe into the matter.

“Now, it has been over four months. And so far, no effort is seen to have been taken in the matter by the bank to recover my hard-earned money from the people who looted it,” says Ajesh in a letter written to the CEO of the bank.

Earlier, speaking to The Daily Tribune, Ali Beshara, the Head of Information Security and Risk Management at The BENEFIT Company, attributed the rise in online fund transfer scams to lack of alertness from the part of users.

Mr Beshara also pointed out that this kind of cybercrime involves ‘social engineering’ - a term used by information security professionals to describe the action from the part of hackers, who deploy their highest social engineering skills to get information, which is supposed to be kept secret, private and never shared, from their victims.