Russia (bbabo.net), - An important clarification for many was made by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, examining the claim of a citizen who suffered from fraudsters. On his behalf, they asked the cellular company to change the SIM card. As a result, the scammers managed to withdraw all the money from the person’s accounts in a couple of days. The victim felt a scam, but the operator reacted to his complaints for so long that the scammers had a head start of several days.
The Pravo ru portal told about this lawsuit. The story began with the fact that the mobile operator replaced the subscriber's SIM card without his consent. Because of this, the subscriber lost access to his number for four days. This time was enough for the scammers to use the citizen's mobile phone to gain access to his bank accounts and write off all his money.
The affected citizen considered it right to recover the lost funds from the operator. For this, he went to court. But he was not lucky. The case was considered by three local courts in turn. And all of them refused the citizen, believing that the communication service provider could not control the banking operations of customers. After that, the case reached the Supreme Court, which first asked about the reason for replacing the SIM card to the plaintiff.
And now the details of this case. One day the owner of the phone received an SMS from his mobile operator. It said that the subscriber, according to his statement, is changing the SIM card. But he actually never asked the operator to change the card and mobile number.
Literally immediately, our hero called the operator's office on the "hot line" and said that the request for a replacement of the SIM card was unknown from whom, but he did not submit one. The subscriber immediately demanded to reissue the number back to his name. But the operator's employees refused to accept the oral statement. Then the subscriber literally ran to the nearest office, where he wrote a statement that his SIM card was issued by scammers.
Four days have passed since the submission of this application, during which the scammers were able to access his accounts in five banks using the subscriber's telephone number. It was possible to write off money through the online systems of two banks. Fraudsters stole 503,000 rubles from the first credit institution, and 15,600 rubles from the second.
A month later, the mobile operator admitted the mistake and returned the number to the subscriber. The operator conducted an internal check, which showed that the SIM card was replaced at the request of an unknown person. He pretended to be a representative of the victim, presenting a passport and a power of attorney to an employee of the mobile operator.
The affected subscriber insisted that the theft of money occurred solely through the fault of the operator, who did not ensure the protection of the data of users of their services.
The victim filed a lawsuit against the mobile operator in the district court. In the lawsuit, he wrote that he demanded to recover damages from the defendant - stolen money, interest on them and compensation for moral damage. He substantiated his demands by the Law "On Protection of Consumer Rights".
The operator has checked. She showed that the SIM was replaced at the request of an unknown person who identified himself as a representative of the victim
But the citizen was not lucky - the district court refused to satisfy his demands. The first instance considered that the mobile operator could not influence the plaintiff's banking operations. And the court also said that at the time of writing off the money, the contract for the provision of communication services had not been terminated and the subscriber had access to his mobile number and bank accounts. And in general, "the plaintiff did not provide sufficient evidence that his losses arose through the fault of the defendant."
Higher authorities also agreed with the conclusions of the district court. That's when the victim complained to the Supreme Court. In his complaint, the plaintiff insisted that it was due to the defendant's mistake that the swindlers gained access to the remote management of his bank accounts. According to the plaintiff, after the theft of the number, he was deprived of the opportunity to use communication services. He even tried to block the contact in his personal account on his own, but the defendant unfrozen it anyway.
And the citizen also noticed that the cellular company did not submit the documents on the basis of which it decided to change the number.
The plaintiff himself came to the meeting of the Supreme Court, where he said that after the theft of the number, he still had access to the subscriber's personal account, where he could see messages from banks that came to his number. And four days after the theft, the operator did not try to help him and he had to independently block each money transfer operation. "Such crimes occur regularly, but mobile operators do not even try to fight them," the plaintiff is sure.To which the representative of the operator replied that the fact of receiving a SIM card does not in itself give access to bank accounts. The plaintiff did not prove a causal relationship between the theft of the number and the debiting of money. According to the operator's representative, one of the dealers told them that the customer's representative had submitted an application for a replacement SIM card. "To confirm his authority, the client's representative showed our employee a power of attorney and a passport. We had no reason not to replace the SIM card. But we do not have a copy of the power of attorney," a representative of the cellular company said.
However, the Supreme Court was not convinced by these arguments. He canceled the acts of the lower courts and sent the case for a new trial in the first instance.
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