According to reports, Ali Akbaş’s (48) hacked cell phone was used to access his mobile banking account on May 4th at 02:47 in the night. Scammers first took out a loan in Akbaş’s name. In addition to taking out a loan, the scammers also used the cash advance account, sending approximately 300,000 liras in small amounts to different individuals’ accounts within 10 minutes.
When Akbaş woke up in the morning and couldn’t open his cell phone, he thought it was broken and took it to a repairman. Not finding any issues, the repairman reset the phone, suspecting a virus. Akbaş then came back home and restored his mobile banking accounts, only to find that his account was in the negative and a loan had been taken out in his name. He went to the police station to file a complaint, and then contacted the bank to block his accounts.
Stating that he works for minimum wage and does not have the means to pay such a large amount of money, Akbaş requested help from authorities to solve the issue. Akbaş explained, “My cell phone was compromised. Unauthorized access was made to my accounts without my permission. Cash and credit were withdrawn from my account. I am facing a loss of approximately 300,000 liras. They took out a loan from a private bank where I receive my wages. They took over my account and approved transactions as if I had done them. They made a 300,000 lira transaction in 10 minutes. After realizing the incident, I went to the police station, gave a statement, and filed a complaint. I immediately called the bank’s customer service to learn the details of the incident. They blocked my account right away. We are currently waiting for the process to unfold.”
Upon investigating the account details, Akbaş revealed that the withdrawn money had been transferred to second and third-party accounts. He said, “The money was transferred by wire to second and third parties. The bank also initiated necessary correspondence at the initial stage. When the incident occurred, we conducted an investigation. It seems that the accounts of the second and third parties cannot be traced. This is something we have always read about and now it happened to us. There is probably such an application in place where someone leases out their accounts to perform such transactions. They withdraw from my account and transfer to other accounts.”
Emphasizing that he had downloaded a program approximately a month ago but does not believe it is related to the incident, Akbaş mentioned, “I had deleted the program a week before the incident happened. Someone also interfered with my email, moving inbox messages to the trash. I noticed this later on. The individuals behind this were professionals. They managed to scam 300,000 lira in just 10 minutes. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. We always read about such incidents in the news and now it happened to us. I am someone who works on minimum wage. I do not have the means to pay for this. I request that my loss be recognized and compensated.”
