The Kurunegala District Deputy Inspector General’s Office has warned of a financial scam targeting personal bank account details using the Tax Identification Number (TIN) recently introduced by Sri Lanka’s Inland Revenue Department.
According to the Kurunegala District DIG’s Office, scammers are posing as bank officers and obtaining bank details of individuals using the TIN number programme.
It has been revealed that the Police have received details of several individuals who have lost large sums of money through the financial scam.
Scammers who call as staff members of a state bank and inform about how to maintain an account in the bank concerning the TIN number, then ask for the One-time passwords (OTP) of the bank customer who needs to set up the account. Not knowing that they are caught by a fraudster, some people have given OTP to them without further investigation.
It has been revealed that the fraudulent gang that obtains the OTP has entered the bank account of the person they contacted and taken large sums of money, Kurunegala District DIG’s Office said.
It is reported that in the recent past, over Rs. 200,000 had been stolen from the bank account of a Buddhist monk from Kurunegala, while Rs. 1 million had been stolen from another individual.
The Kurunegala District DIG’s Office requested the public not to fall victim to such scams and it has launched a special programme in Kurunegala to warn the public in this regard. (NewsWire)