CABS Says We Don’t Ask For Customer’s Pins After Cyber Criminal Steals $26 000

In the first quarter of 2019 alone $42 million was lost due to cybercrime and less than $1.5 million was recovered.

In a recent case, a CABS client -Reuben Mpofu- lost was defrauded of over $26000 through cybercrime. Though the criminals in question didn’t use card cloning in this instance, they used SMS to perform the heist.

Mpofu received a text from someone pretending to be CABS and shortly after received a call asking him for account details which had been shared via SMS.

The victim received successive messages informing him that $10 000, $5000 and $720 had been deducted. The deductions went on until $3.20 was left in the account.

When the client was being notified of the transactions he had called the suspected criminal who had contacted him asking for the code only to be told that the transactions were not unusual but only a result of the bank fixing his account.

Realising his funds had actually been stolen after he went to a CABS branch, Mpofu then went to report the matter to a police station. Bulawayo Police spokesperson confirmed the fraud and urged members of the public to desist from responding to messages asking for personal banking details;

We have discovered a new crime where people have lost substantial amounts of money to thugs. Though we have only received cases from CABS bank, however, those who use other financial institutions should take caution
What they do is, you receive a text message purporting to be from your bank. Then they will tell you to enter a code in your phone as acknowledgement. Believing that it will be genuine, you will respond, and in a few minutes to follow, all your account will be cleared of the money that you have.
Inspector Abednico Ncube

CABS general manager reiterated the same point making it clear that if you get a message asking for your personal banking details;

CABS will never ask you to confirm any personal banking information PIN, OTP (one-time passwords) over the phone. Do not honour such requests. Call CABS immediately on 0242-883822.
In addition, OTPs (one-time passwords) sent to customers contain a similar warning. As we develop our services, systems and apps, we will embed further measures to combat fraudsters
We will look at the merits of this individual case (customers of all banks are at risk) and refund if appropriate, as we do for other cases of fraud.
CABS Managing Director Simon Hammond