Vendor received Rs 30 lakh, not Rs 30 crore, clarifies SBI

The mysterious case of a flower vendor in Channapatna receiving a whopping Rs 30 crore in her zero-balance account took a twist on Wednesday, with the State Bank of India issuing a clarification.

DH had reported the incident on Wednesday under the headline ‘Flower vendor finds Rs 30 cr in zero-balance a/c’. Reacting to the article, SBI in a statement said the vendor did not receive Rs 30 crore, but only Rs 30 lakh.

The bank also revealed that there were a few suspicious transactions amounting to Rs 30 and Rs 40 lakh over a period of three months from the same account. Interestingly, there have been several complaints pending before the cyber crime investigation cells of Chandigarh, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand pertaining to the said account over fake identity, cheating or fraud.

As per instructions from the cyber crime cell of Chandigarh, the branch had directed the freezing of the account.

“Based on the OTP shared by the customer, online fraudsters have misused the account and have made hundreds of illegal transactions. Imran, the husband of the customer, has admitted that the account details and OTP were shared with anonymous callers,” the statement
stated.