Financial Fraud Tops The List Of All Cyber Crimes In Delhi

New Delhi: Online financial fraud remained on the top of cybercrimes committed in 2020. According to CyPAD (Cyber Crime Prevention, Awareness & Detection Unit) of Delhi Police, maximum complaints received by the units were related to financial frauds followed by social media related crimes.

Among the complaints of various cyber crimes received, the predominant ones are of online financial fraud, accounting for around 62 per cent of the total. This was followed by 24 per cent of the complaints related to social media crimes, primarily online harassment, and the rest 14 per cent of other cybercrimes such as hacking, identity theft, data theft, etc.

Sharing the data a senior Delhi Police officer said clearly, the incidents of online financial fraud outnumber others by a big margin and a major contributor to this is the lack of due diligence or carelessness on the part of the victims.

According to the CyPAD, the number of complaints of various types of cybercrimes was around 1,500 in the month of January 2020 which increased to around 3,000 by November 2020.

Moreover, during the lockdown months and immediately thereafter, there was a significant increase in the incidents of cybercrime with the number of complaints reaching a peak of around 4,500 in the months of April, May, June and July.  It has come down due to sustained effort to arrest criminals involved in this field.

Delhi Police has reiterated its understanding many times that precaution is the only protection against cybercrime. Still, unsuspecting and gullible people inadvertently make mistakes while dealing with cyber criminals and fall prey to them.

Cyber criminals are repeatedly coming up with new ways to scam people. A perusal of the complaints received by Delhi Police reveals that cases of extortion by morphing videos of people (especially related to sexual conduct) have increased manifold. Apart from this, reimbursement of fake reward points or cash-backs, SOS messages through fake Facebook accounts, Customer Care number manipulation through search-engine optimization resulting in frauds in the guise of refund of airline tickets and other online payments, etc. are other Modus Operandi that cyber criminals have adopted to dupe people.

Regional Linkage of Cyber Crime

The Cyber Crime Unit of Delhi Police has extensively studied and analysed the various complaints of cybercrimes and their trends and concluded that there are various regions throughout the country that have specialized in different types of cybercrimes.

Cyber Crime Trend Region wise

In a concerted action against such a hot-spot, a large number of cases (43) were registered against frauds pertaining to resale Apps originating from the Mewat region. A total of 41 persons were arrested in these cases. Apart from this, several cases were registered in matters related to tech-support, immigration and IRS Call Centre scams and 125 persons were arrested.

These fake call centres were being used to cheat foreign nationals. Delhi Police have busted five such fake call centres that were operating at a big level from Moti Nagar, Rajouri Garden and Peeragarhi and arrested 125 persons, including the owners/managers who were operating the call centres.

• Fake Call Centres primarily target citizens of English-speaking countries.
• They impersonate as legitimate technical support from reputed Tech companies such as Microsoft, Apple, HP, AT&T, etc.
• Another MO commonly used is to extort money after threatening legal action in respect of tax violations, social security number misuse or immigration rule violations.
• Though Indian LEAs are handicapped by lack of complaints from aggrieved foreign nationals, yet they act against such scam call centres on the basis of local intelligence inputs.

Tips To Stay Safe:

• If someone is using a threat or an inducement to push you to act as per their directions, then view such direction with suspicion. No genuine agency or its representative will use such coercive means to force an action.
• If you are in doubt about a technology-related process or procedure, feel free to seek guidance and support from friends, relatives or a trusted source. With the technology domain evolving at such a fast pace, even experts are not abreast with latest information. There is no embarrassment in seeking help. Rather, if you get cheated or defrauded, then the criminal will certainly have the last laugh.
• Share with care and caution. Consider your phone/device screen as a live wire, which can give you a huge shock if not handled properly. Thus, any inadvertent or deliberate sharing of personal or confidential information such as OTP, PIN, etc., just because you rushed through the things and didn’t pay due attention, can give you a shock of the lifetime.
• If you have become victim of a cybercrime, the first thing to do is to get out of harm’s way. Stop all further communication; protect your data, device and assets. Secondly, capture the evidence related to the crime through screenshots, screen recordings, etc., otherwise they may be lost forever. Thirdly, report the matter to the police as well as to the service providers such as banks, wallets, cards, social media platforms, instant messaging apps, etc.