PEOPLE have been warned against fraudsters who pretend to represent their banks and end up hacking into their accounts and taking their money.
Police have raised the alarm against the online banking fraud after several people lost money from their bank accounts.
Fiji Police Force public relations manager Ana Naisoro said they had been receiving a number of reports of hacked accounts recently.
"In most of the cases, people find their money missing when they check their bank balance," she said.
"We get an average of two cases a week."
While expressing concern on the new wave of crime, Ms Naisoro said the police cyber-crime unit was working on the cases.
Police are working closely with the banks and the Financial Intelligence Unit.
Information received by The Fiji Times showed that a person or group of people hack into the bank accounts and transfer money.
A prominent Suva businessman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he lost $3000 from his bank account recently.
"I reported the matter to police who are investigating. Apparently it seems to be a hacker in Africa," he said.
"When I went to the Criminal Investigations Department to report the matter, I was told by police officers that they had received 14 complaints in two weeks."
The businessman said internet banking worldwide was a major problem.
He said the bank where he has his account and from which the money was transferred has told him that he would not get his money back.
Commenting on the new wave of crime, Westpac Fiji general manager Adrian Hughes said it was not internet fraud but electronic mail scams which involved all banks.
"We have done a lot of work in educating the community, our customers," he said.
"What's happening is that hoax emails with lots of information available, purporting to be from banks, are sent to customers approaching them to log in to their bank accounts."
Mr Hughes said once the customers log in, the numbers are retrieved and used to access funds in the accounts. "It's not an internet fraud, it's a numbers game. And it's not true that only Westpac is involved, the other banks too are there.
"Email scam is an international problem and I've been working with the FIU on this issue. Westpac has put in place additional measures to protect customers and we have written to every one of our customers."
Mr Hughes said most of the email scams are initiated out of Africa.
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FIU director Razim Buksh said cybercrime has been a global threat in the past two decades and is an emerging trend and threat for Fiji.
"The Fiji FIU has noted the use of internet banking facility portals at local commercial banks for cybercrime related activities such as phishing, hacking, identity theft and advance fee fraud," he said.
Mr Buksh said earlier that authorities in Fiji were taking the matter seriously and have established a strong networking and partnership with domestic as well as foreign counterpart agencies.
He said the FIU, commercial banks as well as the Association of Banks in Fiji have alerted customers and members of the public to exercise caution and care when accessing their bank accounts online.
Attempts to obtain comments yesterday from the Association of Banks in Fiji were futile.
FIU director Razim Buksh said cybercrime had been a global threat in the past two decades and was an emerging trend and threat for Fiji.
"The FIU has noted the use of internet banking facility portals at local commercial banks for cybercrime related activities such as phishing, hacking, identity theft and advance fee fraud," he said.
Mr Buksh said earlier authorities in Fiji were taking the matter seriously and had established a strong networking and partnership with domestic as well as foreign counterpart agencies.
He said the FIU, commercial banks as well as the Association of Banks in Fiji had alerted customers and members of the public to exercise caution and care when accessing their bank accounts online.
Attempts to obtain comments yesterday from the Association of Banks in Fiji were futile.