•By Crooks To Empty Your Bank Account
The story of Ayoola Olamilekan has caused a lot of confusion among Nigerians who saw the video of how young Nigerians fraudulently removed people’s hard-earned money from their bank accounts In a space of 30 minutes immediately their phones are stolen. No matter how smart you are these guys will find a way to steal your money unless you are smarter.
Let’s tell you what you need to know about the boy that was caught and how it happened.
A few days ago, an Osun State Police Command paraded a 26 years old alleged fraudster, Ayoola Olalekan who revealed how he uses people’s alert sim card, ATM card to steal money.
How does he do it? Who taught him and what technology does he use. These are some of the questions people have been asking since his arrest.
When he was paraded he was asked how they carry out their operation. These are the things he said.
I’m involved in “Wire-wire” also called sim transactions. Sim transactions is a local ‘wire’. We operate with any alert sim card. We operate on any sim card connected to a bank account. I will successfully remove the money from the account to which the sim was registered.
For instance: If I was given a sim car; an alert sim to be precise and I want to know the bank the owner of the sim card uses, I will dial a code which will give me that. Once I dial the number and it brings out the details of the personal bank account, I will now try to reset the pin of the person and it will demand I get the date of birth and the account number. Some people do save their account number on their phone contact, while some don’t. Once I am able to get these details, I will now use the BVN to bring out the details of the account. Once I bring it out, I will now register the bank of the person and I will now transfer from the account. Once I enter the account number and the date of birth, it will direct me to create a pin and I will create a new pin that will enable me to transfer. If there’s no money in the account, I will borrow from it if it’s a salary account.
I can’t operate without a sim linked to a bank account. I can’t just operate with any sim card; it has to be a bank alert sim card. I will transfer the money to no trace account.
It might not even be a sim but I will work with any BVN.
A few days back on Soni Irabor radio programme on Inspiration FM, tagged Discusses. The dangers of losing a phone to hackers or scammers was discussed and two men did justice to the topic.
On the programme was Chief Bayo Babatunde, a retired banker and Mr Tunji Beyioku, a Telcom expert.
According to a retired banker, he said it would be difficult for banks to stop money from being taken from your account because it’s your money and you have the right to it any day any time.
Shortly after, the Telcom Expert, Mr Tunji Beyioku reveals that there are 3 things people shouldn’t save on the phone. First, don’t save BVN as BVN on your contact list. Always save it with a different name. The second thing is your date of birth. Don’t save your date of birth in your contact list. Don’t save your account number as your account number in your contact list. Because the first thing these hackers would check is your contact list whether your BVN is on your contact list or whether your account number is on your contact list. So these are the first 3 things you should do and this what I call phone hygiene. Everybody must have phone hygiene.
Secondly, if you do not have your sim card lock today it’s something you can do now. You must do something I call a sim lock. Everybody must have a sim lock to his phone. There is a simple step to do that. And if you fail to do a sim lock to your phone, all your bank accounts may be wiped out within 5 minutes like the phone who was caught said. And it’s a simple step. For you to do a sim lock: go to the Setting on your sim hacker. Under setting, you go to security and location. Then you will see a sim card lock. You will click on that sim card lock and it would ask you to enter your mobile network default sim number. For instance: for MTN users, the default sim lock is 00000 (zero in 5 places). For Airtel users, it’s quadruple 1 (1111). For 9mobile users, it’s quadruple 0000 (zero in 4 places). For GLO users, it’s also zero in 4 places (0000). After you enter this mobile default pin, it would ask you to change it to a unique 4 digit code number that you will remember. You will reenter it and you are fine. And once this is done and these guys steal your phone, your sim is already locked to that phone. So what the guy would do is that he would remove the sim card and put it in another phone but it will not also work on that other phone because your sim is locked already. And if he wants to reset your phone, immediately he reset your phone that sim won’t work on that phone. So these are simple steps people must follow to protect their sim card.
No matter what happened if he takes that sim to another phone it still won’t work.
When you buy your sim card it has a sim card pin and from what’s happening now there is a need for orientation and awareness. The populace out there are not really aware of this.
Another way the money kept in the bank is safe is when the owner of the account ask the bank to put post no debit on the account. What many people do is to put post no debit on their account and when the bank receives a cheque in the name of that account or wants to transfer money from the account, the owner would be alerted before any transaction can be done.
-ISAAC ABIMBADE
