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MANILA, Philippines – While 31-year-old Stephen Yu was asleep on the night of September 24, a hacker quietly broke into the system of a bank and took his hard-earned money.
When he woke up the following morning, Yu found out that he was poorer by almost P50,000 after his account with Banco de Oro at SM in Marilao was allegedly hacked and robbed of a total of P49, 500, which he only discovered when he opened his email at around 9 a.m.
A client like Yu, who enrolled with BDO’s Internet banking, automatically receives a notification after every transaction.
The BDO emails showed that he supposedly made his first withdrawal of P500 at 11:06 p.m. of Sept. 24, 2012 followed by 49 more withdrawals of P1,000 each or a total of P49,500 in just more than an hour. The last withdrawal was recorded at 12:35 a.m. of September 25.
After being informed through his email of the withdrawals, Yu immediately went to the nearest BDO branch in Potrero, Malabon on the same day to report the matter.
“We rushed to the nearest branch of BDO in Potrero Malabon but the teller told us that they [can’t] do anything about this matter since we did not open the account in their branch,” Yu said in his Oct. 25, 2012 letter to Medardo F. Fabro, bank manager at SM City, Marilao Bulacan.
“We also tried calling the BDO customer service since we know that they have full access in Internet banking. We told them that our online banking has been hacked and all the transactions should be cancelled,” he said.
But Yu said that the BDO customer care representative allegedly refused to cancel the transactions, saying this could only be done if he would close his account in the branch where he opened it.
“So the transfer [of money] continued until we reached BDO SM Marilao branch. [At that point], we already lost P50,000 because BDO refused [to grant our request] to block the online transactions,” Yu said.
From the bank, Yu went straight to a police station in Marilao to report the incident.
He lamented, however, that until now or more than a month since the hacking took place, the BDO has not yet acted on his complaint.
Because of this, Yu said he was now considering filing appropriate charges against the bank.
Yu, who worked for three years in Dubai and Abu Dabi, was only in the country to prepare for his next work in Saudi Arabia in November.
But before leaving for his next destination, Yu hopes to get back the money that was easily taken away from him by the hacker.
Sought for comment, Fabro confirmed that he received the complaint just this Tuesday.
And the bank manager promised to immediately act on it by forwarding the complaint to BDO’s main office.
“Don’t worry, we’re giving priority to the complainant,” he said over the phone.
Fabro said this was the first time that his office had received a hacking incident in their Internet banking system.
“As far as we’re concerned, this is the first time that we received such complaint,” he said.
“Ngayon ko lang na encounter ito,” he added.
Asked if it was still safe to engage in internet banking, Fabro said, “Yes of course. It’s still very safe.”