A reader has kindly consented to share his ordeal with Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) fraud and how he got his money back.
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The email received from the reader is published as-is below.
Dear Pattu Sir, Been an ardent follower of your blogs and a member of AIFW (Facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth) for some time. I would like to share a story with you and all readers for public knowledge.
On September 9th 2023, I opened my father’s PNB mobile banking app and saw that he had withdrawn 10k the previous day. When I asked him, he said no, I didn’t do anything such as that account is not much used.
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Upon checking the transaction narration, I saw- MICRO ATM CASH WITHDRAWAL– 10,000 INR.
I googled it and discovered it was related to an AePS transaction.
AePS stands for Aadhaar-enabled payment system. Someone can withdraw money using fingerprint authentication- a max of 10k per day from each bank account, which is Aadhaar-linked.
I understood there was a fraud and started checking all the bank accounts of the entire family and found the same transaction and another debit of 10k from HDFC Bank. Total 20k debited from two separate Bank accounts.
I then opened UIDAI and found multiple attempts to do transactions- you can check the Aadhaar authentication attempts. I then locked the Aadhaar of the entire family.
Then, I immediately informed both banks regarding this by calling and mailing customer care. I went to the police station and filled out the gd (general diary) by evening.
I reported on the NPCI AePS complaints portal, Bank complaint management portal, and cybercrime portal with a copy of GD.
After following up with both banks for approximately two months, at the end of November, both returned the money (10k from each bank).
It was a very painful lesson that if someone steals your fingerprint data(from the ration card department, land records department, telephone company, etc), they can withdraw money from your account if the Aadhaar is not locked. Still, millions of people with Aadhaar are not being locked, and the scammers are using that trick to loot.
I request all of you to lock your Aadhar at the earliest to prevent such fraud. If anybody faces this disaster, file a police complaint and follow the above steps. Follow up with the bank. If still the amount is not reversed, please file a complaint to the RBI ombudsman.
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