PATNA: The RBI Bihar and Jharkhand, regional director G Mahalingam on Friday cautioned people not to fall victim to fictitious offers made through letters, e-mails, cellphones and SMSes.
The fictitious offers are made regarding winning lotteries and remittance of cheap funds in foreign currency from abroad. Other forms of such of-fers are regarding employment and scholarship. The fraudsters are resort-ing to issuing certificates, letters, circulars which are sent through e-mail on letterheads that look like that of the RBI. They use RBI official logo with replicated signatures of its senior officials and top executives to make them appear genuine.
The fraudsters convince the victims by impersonating as senior officials of the RBI, Mahalingam said. Many citizens fall prey to such tempting offers and lose huge amount of money in the process, he said adding the RBI has been running awareness drive to alert the people against fictitious offers.
In case of any such fictitious offers, the affected persons should lodge FIR with the police and write to the RBI, Patna, on its e-mail help-patna@rbi.org.in and crcpatna@rbi.org.in, he added stating that the cyber cell of Mumbai police can also be informed about this.
The foreign exchange department of the RBI cautioned that the caller or mailer doing the fraud claim that the money is held in RBI in the name of individuals/companies/trusts and that the RBI would disburse the fund only when the amount asked for is deposited in the bank.
But the actual position is that the RBI does not maintain any accounts in findividuals/companies/trusts’ name for disbursals. RBI also does not open account for individuals to deposit money with the RBI. Further RBI does not issue certificates of confirmations of receipts evidencing the holding of money in the accounts, Mahalingam said, quoting RBI foreign exchange department’s note of caution. RBI does not authorise any of its officials for such disbursals, he added.