Beware of financial scams, a Warning from the Central Bank

COLOMBO (News 1st); The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has urged the public to be aware and disregard fraudulent scams which require their personal information and their credit/debit card information. In a release, the CBSL states that it has been receiving information regarding certain scams where organized 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 a large amount to any person who can assist in unblocking such amounts. The CBSL further states that such persons also sometimes 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 many such instances, the fraudsters request account details from the 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/internet banking in order to proceed with the transactions. Therefore, the CBSL has urged the public to disregard such fraudulent practices and had also advised all persons to be watchful of these scams. Moreover, the CBSL also advises the public to not to share their confidential information, especially account usernames, passwords, PINs, OTPs or other information required for account verification, with anyone.