Fact Check: Received RBI e-mail/SMS offering fictitious offers, lottery winnings?

New Delhi, Apr 13: In this fast-paced world of the internet and technology, we often fall prey to false claims made by fraudsters. Recently, many people are receiving one such e-mail/SMS claiming to be sent by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). But the central bank has explained that it does not send any e-mail informing people about lottery funds or any such thing.

The RBI has cautioned common public to beware of some unscrupulous entities/scamsters imitating its mails for fraudulent purposes.

Most of such mails are sent using fake domains, which do not belong to the RBI, but these could be deceptively similar involving use of words such as RBI, Reserve Bank, payment, the central bank said in a statement.

PIB Fact Check on its official Twitter handle has alerted everyone about an email scam.

"Reserve Bank of India has issued a statement against unscrupulous elements defrauding the common public," PIB Fact Check tweeted.

Members of the public as well as financial institutions are, therefore, requested to be careful about such fraudulent activities before taking cognizance or any action on such mails, the statement added.

RBI has also urged the public not to get lured by fictitious offers, lottery winnings or remittance of cheap funds in foreign currency.

The apex bank reiterated that it does not hold any account for individuals and neither send any SMS, letter or email for intimating award of lottery funds, etc.

RBI has said that its only official and genuine website is (https://www.rbi.org.in/ or https://rbi.org.in/) and members of public should not get misled by fake websites with similar addresses beginning with 'Reserve Bank', 'RBI', etc., along with fake logos.

RBI has requested public members not to respond to such SMS or emails and immediately report such cases to cybercrime authorities.