"These are the scams in the last 48 hours," the first thing Bank of Maldives Chief Executive Officer Karl Stumke showed were a stack of papers during his interview with Mihaaru News.
"This one is related to a scam involving the purchase of a phone", he said while flipping through the pages.
"And these are two cases of buying furniture from Facebook."
"A transaction of buying MVR 63,000 worth in US Dollars through Viber on the black-market."
"OTP provided to buy a flat of Urbanco."
"This has not been controlled, and not even stopped!", Karl said.
This was also the primary concern of the national bank's Chief during Thursday's interview, December 21. The statements he made provided an alarming insight into the surge of scams in the Maldives in recent months and years.
"A total of 1,657 cases have been filed so far this year, and these numbers aren't any less compared to last year. This is highly concerning for BML," he said.
Statistics of the bank showed that MVR 26 million worth of scams were executed within one year.
Karl highlighted that the most frequent of these scams involved hacking social media accounts to acquire bank-issued card details to illicitly siphon money off of accounts, with the second most frequent of the scams involving the sale of goods at unreasonably low cost and US dollar exchange scams.
Majority of these scams are conducted through an initial transaction of depositing money into the personal accounts. The BML CEO had cautioned the customers to be wary of such instances.
While the bank has carried out several efforts to raise awareness on scams, Karl said that the bank can take counter-measures to an extent but cannot stop the transactions made by customers into other bank accounts on their own volition.
"When we look into some of these scams, we have noticed instances where customers come across a Facebook page promising the sale of certain goods. Customers would then send money to the bank account provided by said page, but would not get the promised product. There are cases of US Dollar exchange scams where the buyer does not receive the exchanged amount, and other instances where scammers deceive unsuspecting individuals to share OTP codes, which they use to hack into their bank account details," Karl said.
With this, Karl raised the question if the bank could intervene into someone sharing their OTP with another.
"These are things which the customers should be aware about," he said.
BML statistics revealed 421 cases of Facebook pages promising the sale of goods at cheap prices with the buyers never receiving the promised product, amounting to a reported value of MVR 3.1 million in unlawfully acquired money.
Statistics further reveal 99 cases of deceptively seeking OTP codes, resulting in MVR 3.8 million in losses from multiple victims.
The bank reports 266 cases of fake currency exchange deals with a reported loss of MVR 3.7 million, and 186 scams related to online trading, amounting to MVR 2.7 million in losses. Additionally, 45 e-SIMS were activated and used to hack into bank details, resulting in a reported loss of MVR 2.4 million.
Scams have been on the rise at an alarming pace, and several authorities and institutions have made it their cause to raise public awareness about the issue.
BML requests its customers to practice extreme caution against scams.
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