Beware! Fraudsters can empty your PF account; know how to save from scam

Online scams have been increased these days. Many complaints have been filed about the illegal money transactions and several bank accounts have been hacked by hackers. It’s an alert for employees who have Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) saving account as fraudsters can target your account too.

A recent case has come to light where a 68-year-old, retired man named Rajendra Khanna just saved himself from paying Rs 20,000 to a fraudster.

Know how scammer can empty your account:

According to the reports in Moneycontrol, the old man received a call from an unknown number who claimed himself an employee of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). He asked Khanna about his personal details like mobile number, Aadhaar number, Permanent account number (PAN), email id, last employment details and universal account number (UAN), etc. Khanna thought the man is the staff of EPFO and hence, he gave all details he asked on a phone call.

Report also said that the fraudster told Khanna that since he had worked between 1990 and 2019, therefore, he is eligible to get a benefit of Rs 80,000 from the EPFO. The scammer continued saying that EPFO has decided to give some benefits to the unclaimed corpus with randomly selected EPFO subscribers. He also trapped Khanna by making false promises that to claim this amount he need to transfer Rs 20,000 as a commission to a particular bank account and get Rs 80,000 credited to his bank account later without hassles.

All efforts of the scammer go in waste when Khanna decided to cross-check him by visiting the official website of the EPFO after putting his call on hold. After visiting the official website, Khanna found a pop-up message with an alert that said, “EPFO never asks you to share your personal details such as Aadhaar / PAN / UAN over the phone. Also, EPFO never calls any member/subscriber to deposit any amount in any bank account for processing an unclaimed amount. Please do not respond to such fake calls.”

After reading the notice, Khanna immediately disconnected the call. Later, the fraudster was unreachable when Khanna tried to contact him again for the fraud explanation.

These days scammers are targeting EPFO subscribers by making false promises so as to transfer one balance in the PF account to a fraud bank account.

How you can save yourself?

In case, you get any such call then immediately rushed to the cyber-police department in your area and lodge a first information report (FIR) report. Also, notify EPFO about the same to keep their eyes on the account if unauthorized activity happening in your PF account.

Due to the increasing use of digital payment and social media, online scams have been increased. What one can do to save himself/herself from such traps, just beware of such fake calls and never give any personal details to an anonymous person.

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