June 8, 2022 – An online banking fraud has emerged on Twitter with the impersonators allegedly claiming to be officials from the Pakistan Army.
The scam was first reported on Twitter on Tuesday by a Karachi-based user, who tweeted that she received a call from “someone who said he was from the Pakistan Army”. She said that the impersonators, purporting themselves to be officials from the army, asked for her banking details, including whether she possessed an ATM card and how much money she had in her accounts.
The user added that the scammers knew her CNIC number, residential address, among other things as well. When she expressed reservations regarding sharing her banking details on the phone and questioned why the army would need this information, the scammers’ response implied that they were investigating the accounts that were “being used in actions against Pakistan”.
The user, however, went on to add that she thought the call was a scam and that she wanted to “flag it in case others receive such calls”.
The responses to her tweets indicated that these calls are a common fraud wherein the impersonators use the Pakistan Army’s name to intimidate and harass the general public to maliciously obtain their banking information.
Similar phone calls have also been reported in the past, often prompting a clarification from the army’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
DRM reached out to the user to seek her permission to use her tweets in the article but she has yet to respond
