Author Name:   Soumik Saha

This article talks about banking fraud in general highlighting the various types of banking frauds.

Banking sector is an integral part of any nation, the access to banks has increased manifold in recent past, even though there are certain categories of people who still cannot avail of the opportunities that a banking sector provides. Inspite of such improvement of this sector the main concern amongst the customers and service providers is the impact of banking fraud which is increasing at a massive growth which if cannot be curtailed could lead to serious negative issues. According to section 1344 title 18 of United States Code a bank fraud is defined as an act by any person who knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme or artifice defrauds a financial institution or obtains any of the moneys, funds, credits, assets, securities, or other property owned by, or under the custody or control of, a financial institution, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises. A literal meaning of the definition points out that there has to be an intention of duping any persons, be it a financial institution or a natural person with the object of obtaining any of the moneys, funds or credits that the concerned financial institution or a natural person possesses. With the growth of technology, banking frauds through online mediums have gained popularity amongst the cyber fraudsters.

There are certain categories of scams and frauds which one should be aware of, let us analyse some of them:-

Phishing-

one of the major ways by which a fraudster strikes a victim is through phishing. Phishing is an act by which the organization who is associated with such a crime sends out a mailshot to victims with the sole purpose of stealing all the valuable information of the cardholder’s account. They in the process make a fake website which is a lookalike of the original website of the financial institutions and the victims believing in the authenticity of the mailshot and the fake website enter all the necessary details. The major cases of bank frauds have been through phishing. To combat such an act, the bank authority publishes information to all the customers of the banks that they should not fall prey to any of such text messages or emails where the details of the customers are being asked in the name of that concerned bank.

Identity Threat-

This is a criminal offence where an impostor obtains all the valuable information of the victim and grabs all the personal details in order to run an illegal activity, fraudulent credit card or takes loans in the name of the victim. This has been on an increase in the European countries. It is always advisable not to disclose any personal information such as bank details, social security number or driver’s license to an unknown stranger. If anybody is shifting his or her residential address the notification to the required authority should be done as soon as possible. A safely disposal of all valuable information should be made such as bank statements, credit card statements in order to avert such a crime.

Viruses–

viruses and Trojans are harmful computer programmes that are installed in one’s laptop or computer even without the consent of the person using the laptop or the computer. The main idea behind the installation of such virues and Trojans is to slow down the application process of the computer in the process infecting and crashing the computer operating system. Trojans get embedded in the computer even though they appear to be genuine software programmes and thereby gathering and colleting all the valuable information from the computer. A proper security enabled anti virus software can be effective in order to fight such harmful programmes. There have been many cases where innocent customers have been defrauded through online transaction without the use of proper anti-virus installation.

Atm skimming-

This is the most effective way to defraud a card holder. Card skimming is cloning in an illegal way to capture the magnetic strip and the pin code data on the credit or debit card for fraudulent withdrawals and transactions. There are many instances where false casing or pin pad devices are attached on the genuine ATMS to capture all the necessary details such as pin card password, the account holder’s name, the account number.

The way to reduce and fight such menace is proper awareness of banking frauds. Even though many people do not pay heed to adverse impact a banking fraud could bring in, considering that it would not happen to them, a study reveals that there has been an increase in banking fraud around the globe. Every two out of ten people are becoming a victim at the hands of these fraudsters . A realistic view may reveal nabbing a criminal who is associated with such criminal offence is very difficult because the person who is doing such an act may be situated at a distant foreign land while committing the offence. The statistic reveals only a small percentage recovers money lost through banking frauds which may include any of the means analysed in this article.

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