Drunk customer hands over debit card, PIN to waiter, loses Rs 4.48L

The waiter offered to withdraw cash to settle the bill, but jotted down details of the card

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Pune: Let this techie's blunder be a lesson on guarding your debit card and PIN at all times. A 33-year-old resident of Aundh in Pune lost Rs 4.48 lakh from his bank account last week after he shared his debit card and its PIN with the waiter of a restaurant.

Around 10 pm on August 3, the techie had food and drinks at Punjabi Swad Hotel, a restaurant in Dehu Road, and racked up a bill of R700. "The waiter, Rohit Jaiswal, told him that the card swipe machine wasn't working and offered to withdraw cash from a nearby ATM. The customer was drunk at the time. So, he accepted the off­er, and handed over his debit card and PIN to him", said Arun More, senior inspector of Dehu Road police station. Jaiswal returned with the cash and settled the bill.

The Aundh resident realised that he had been swindled the next day when he found that R40,000 in cash had been withdrawn from his bank account and R4.08 lakh transferred to another account. "He initially suspected that someone had hacked his account. Our investigation found that Jaiswal had taken advantage of the customer and duped him. He noted down the 16-digit debit card number as well as the PIN and used them to transact the fraud," said More.

Jaiswal was arrested and booked under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code as well as 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act.

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