Who Mugged him?

“How Secure is contactless payment? 4 common misconceptions”– An article in money control. I read this article 3 day back and from that time, I have been itching to write this post.

Banks have robust systems which can track every single rupee being transacted using its systems. It has different department to take care to monitor it. Despite all this, you could be like my friend, who could lose money through the cards provided by the bank and find not much help from the bank in recovering the money. Yes, this post of mine is about the ordeal my friend underwent when he was mugged in Paris, France.  Yes! such petty crime does happen in an advanced society like Paris.

January 2020, would never be forgotten by my friend or me, as I was with him through this difficult time.

Paris was undergoing one of its worst transport strikes, thereby making our commutation difficult. We couldn’t go and visit many historical places and have a pleasant memory of this trip. We ended up with a bad memory. We had stayed close to 2 months in this place and we started craving for authentic south Indian food. We heard about this place which housed many famous restaurants from our state and decided to try. There were many good restaurants in this place and nothing much else to do, we decided to try these restaurants for the remaining weekends we had. The first Sunday it went well and we were relieved to have our style food. The disaster struck us in the next week, when we decided to hit this place on a Saturday afternoon. To reach this place, we had to change trains, these trains were being operated for limited time due to the strike. Owing to the strike and being a Saturday, there was a huge crowd in the transit station. My friend kept reminding me to be careful with the wallet. As the train halted at the station and after lot of people getting out, we along with the huge crowd tried our luck to board the train. After trying and realizing that it is difficult to board, we retracted, only for my friend to realize that he lost his purse.

Within minutes of he being robbed of his purse which had multiple credit & debit cards along with identity proofs, and we realizing what to be done, he started getting sms of money being withdrawn. We both started contacting the customer care numbers to block the card to avoid further activity on the card, but couldn’t get through as we were getting automatic response saying the numbers are not valid. By searching the internet and repetitive calls, we were only able to block 1 card and during this time, my friend had already lost close to 4.5 lakh INR(21000 AED plus 15000 INR). One Indian bank had put a temporary block after one withdrawal, we also got some time to successfully block the other cards due to greediness of the fraudster, who was trying bigger denominations. After multiple attempts we managed to block the cards.

All our excitement of the day turned into gloom and we decided to go back to our room and decide the next course of action. On our way back, we reluctantly called a client side person to seek suggestion, she advised us to register a police complaint.

We as common man, have apprehension in going to a police station, blame it on films and news we hear and see. With such apprehension, my friend visited the police station and had to experience a long queue to register the complaint. He understood that many in this queue were unfortunate people like him who were mugged at various metro stations. He also saw one Indian, still frantically trying the customer care number of his bank to block the cards, this guy had lost close to 10 lakh INR. My friend's experience with the police was good, wherein they took his complaint and help him with multiple copies of official documents, so that he could use it for substantiating his story with banks and government departments (he had lost government issued proofs also). Police also told him they will check with the metro station video feed and if they nab the culprit, they will call him and suggested him not to frequently visit the police station. The last statement, brought back the apprehension and when checked with client, our fear was substantiated. We were told that; this is the best you can expect from the police.

 Armed with the police provide documents, we contacted the banks from India and Abu Dhabi to register the fraud claim on the money swiped from the cards. Abu Dhabi bank, had a bot to guide us on registering the fraud and after that case was registered, the call was transferred to the customer care representative, who further advised us to email the soft copy of the police complaint along with the claim form which had details of transaction which we wanted to dispute. Bank from India had also advised us to follow the same steps.

 We are quality assurance professionals, who have worked for such bank project implementation and know what happens during such dispute process. With this knowledge, he waited for the banks to respond.

Bank from India (15k INR) were the first to respond positively and acknowledged the dispute. The money was returned to my friend. The bank from Abu Dhabi, took time and had to be followed up before they responded. There was no positive response from the bank and we couldn’t reach the right team to reverse this decision.

From the day of response till mid of march, my friend had to run from pillar to post to make the Abu Dhabi bank to reconsider his case and reverse the decision. In meantime he had to arrange for the money and pay the bank to avoid penal charge amount. Our manager in Abu Dhabi was also helpless, as bank didn’t entertain the complaint from him and wanted my friend to visit the branch and lodge the complaint. After lot of explanation and follow up, bank finally relented to refer the cases to VISA, this gave my friend a ray of hope. VISA also took time to investigate the case, but didn’t give a positive response. Bank has also categorically refused to further investigate the case.

The reason given by bank and VISA is that, the transaction had happened by entering the PIN and hence the claim for dispute can’t be entertained. The fraudster, we believe had sophisticated simulators which helped him crack the PIN and withdraw the amount from multiple shop POS machines, which otherwise is impossible.

My friend during this time also tried to get help from French police to recover the money. He gave evidences of the Shop and the location (We googled with details in SMS to locate the shop) and requested them to investigate. To his disappointment, he was told by police that, they can’t investigate anything as there was no video evidence maintained in the Metro station and can’t go to these shops (which were in 1 km radius of this station), instead he was again given copies of same set of documents and asked to follow up with the bank.
Friends, I am not writing this to earn sympathy for my friend who has and is undergoing hard time in paying back the amount, but to warn you about the ordeal you could undergo in similar situation. After reading this post, who do you think mugged him, is it the fraudster, or the police or the banks. Banking systems are designed to prevent frauds and help people banking with them to safeguard the money.