Its spokesman Richard Hrdina reported on the case on the website of the Prague police on Thursday.
On the morning of March 20, the police received a report about a suspiciously masked man who had been withdrawing money from an ATM in Prague 1 for a long time. By the time the patrol arrived, the suspect was no longer at the ATM, but they managed to track him down in the shopping center on Náměstí Republiky. The foreigner had more than 160 thousand crowns in cash with him.
In the meantime, a woman came to the police station from whose card someone had withdrawn 40,000 crowns. During the interrogation, the detectives came up with a new way for fraudsters to defraud people of money. Victims are sent an SMS message about, for example, an alleged tax overpayment, which contains a link to a page where the addressee is supposed to enter login details for internet banking. If he does, he will be called by a supposed bank employee and will trick victims into installing a fake banking app on their mobile phone, claiming that their account has been hacked.
“After downloading this application and logging in, they have to attach a payment card to their mobile phone, but the NFC signal will be transferred to another mobile device with which another fraudster is at the ATM, and he can withdraw money in peace,” explained the spokesperson. NFC technology is commonly used to pay wirelessly using a card stored in the phone.
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Since the fraudsters have access to the victim’s online banking, it is not a problem for them to change the protection limit on the card in order to withdraw larger amounts. If they fail to convince the victims to download the fake banking app, they transfer the money to another account they have access to.
The 22-year-old foreigner, whose arrest helped the detectives uncover the method, is in custody. He was accused of committing the crime of unauthorized measure, forgery and altering a means of payment, for which he can face up to eight years behind bars if convicted.
“In this case, the last three victims were very lucky that detectives found their money in cash and it can be returned to them,” added the police spokesman. According to them, there may be more victims, so the police urge them to report to the nearest police department.
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