Bulawayo Man Loses $26 000 To Hackers
A Bulawayo man lost $26 612,97 to fraudsters who reportedly hacked his CABS bank account on October 5.
Reuben Mpofu (54) of Makokoba had, 3 days before the incident, received the money in his account as his pension lump sum.
He received a message on his phone and then an anonymous phone call asking him to respond to the SMS by sending a code he had received.
After sending the code that he had been given, Mpofu lost thousands of dollars and was left with only $3.20. Police said in a statement:
A Bulawayo man lost thousands of dollars in a case of cyber theft on 5/10/19.
The complainant received an SMS on his phone purportedly from his bank followed by a phone call instructing him to respond to the text message.
Large sums of money were immediately withdrawn from his bank account after he responded to the text message.
On checking with the bank it turned out that the bank was not involved in the transactions.
We urge the public to ignore requests to change their pin numbers over the phone but to personally request such services from their banks.