Tata Docomo Has To Pay Rs 8 Lakh To Victim Of SIM-Swap Fraud

The civil court for cybercrimes in Maharashtra directed Tata Docomo to compensate Rs 8.2 lakh to an ICICI Bank account holder for issuing a duplicate SIM without due diligence to an impersonator.

The SIM card was subsequently used by fraudsters to siphon off Rs 7.8 lakh using net banking.

Dattatraya Utekar was a victim of a SIM-swap fraud where criminals managed to activate a new SIM card with his number in July 2015. The fraudsters had managed to do this by getting a SIM card from Tata Docomo using fraudulent documents. The telecom company had argued that the dispute was with the bank (ICICI Bank). The company said that money could not have been siphoned out without a login id or password and neither were provided by the telecom company.

ICICI Bank said it had a three-level security feature which included the grid value on the reverse of the debit card. In its order issued on Thursday, the court said: “ICICI Bank seems to have followed proper guidelines and security measures in this case. It would be only right to state that the reversal of amount fraudulently transferred would have been possible to a large extent provided the SIM card was active. In the final analysis, it is the negligence on the part of respondent no. 2 (Tata DoCoMo) that has led to this fraudulent transaction.”

P Mali, a cyberlaw specialist who represented the victim, said, “Telecom firms should be sensitive about phone numbers being linked to bank accounts.”―Times Of India