Police investigating theft of €15,000 from credit card after phone scam

Limassol police are investigating the theft of €15,000 from a woman’s bank account through an online scam.

Police said the complainant told them that a woman speaking English called the fraud victim pretending to be a representative of a well-known IT company, telling here there was an issue with her PC that needed to be resolved.

Following the caller’s instructions to ‘fix the problem’, the woman unwittingly downloaded the malware needed to carry out the scam, giving the perpetrator access to the computer.

Under the pretense of needing €10 for having fixed the issue, the caller got the woman to type her bank details and obtained the victim’s credit card number, charged €15,000 to the account.

A little later in the day, the victim was alerted to the suspicious transaction by the credit-card processor, and immediately went to the police.

Police said that recently they have received a number of such complaints involving the same type of fraud. They urged the public to be suspicious of anyone asking for bank or card details over the phone. “No banking institution asks for the passwords of its customers,” the police announcement said.