The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has been receiving information regarding certain scams where organised parties claim that they have large amounts of foreign and/or local currency credited to their accounts which have been temporarily blocked, and that they would pay handsome amounts to any person who can assist in unblocking such amounts.
Sometimes they also show forged documentation that large sums of money had been credited to various accounts and they only need to get the approval of the Central Bank to withdraw such monies. In some of these instances, the fraudsters request account details from customers including details of credit and debit cards such as Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), Card Verification Value (CVV), One-Time-Passwords (OTP) and user ID passwords and OTPs of mobile and internet banking to proceed with the transactions.
Needless to say, furnishing such details places those customers at grave financial peril. CBSL calls on the public to disregard such fraudulent notifications and practices, and strongly advises people to be watchful of these scams.
The CBSL also advises people not to share their confidential information, especially account usernames, passwords, PINs, OTPs or other information needed for account verification, with anyone.
The CBSL calls on the public to obtain real-time notification services from their banks, so that they would become instantly aware of any fraudulent activity that takes place using their accounts.