Cyber Crime Cell officials receive 5,000 complaints
Pune: Over 5,000 cybercrime complaints were received by officials of the cyber crime cell (CCC) of the city police crime branch in 2017, which is over 150 per cent higher than complaints in 2016, which saw approximately 2,000 complaints. Officials of the CCC claim that increasing awareness among people and the support provided by CCC to the victims has led to the rise in the reporting of cybercrime cases.
Speaking about the rise in cybercrime complaints, Senior Police Inspector Radhika Phadke of CCC said that the complainants have become alert and are reporting the crime instantly. “It is good that more complaints are being lodged and we are also accepting all complaints. People also ask for a follow up on their cases,” added Phadke.
Speaking about annual trends in cybercrime cases, officials of the CCC said that the year started with the impact of demonetisation and people started using mobile wallets. Cybercriminals continued to target mobile wallets of the victims.
“As the government continued to issue alerts of linking Aadhaar with many government services, cybercriminals, pretending to be government officials, started phishing details of victims and then cheating them,” said an official from CCC.
Police officials said that a majority of the cybercrime cases were related to cheating for illegal gains and there was a rise in cases of sextortion this year. Cyber expert Anil Raj of Cybervault Securities Solutions Private Limited said that people need to follow basic cyber etiquette.
“This includes not sharing one-time passwords, keeping a strong password, deleting digital footprint, not paying people in advance and others,” added Raj.
Trending Cybercrime cases
Criminals luring job seekers for jobs abroad In January 2017, Sanjay Yevale (47), a resident of Wanawadi, lodged a complaint after he lost
Rs 80,000 to online fraudsters who had approached him and offered him a job in Singapore. The fraudsters said they were from Gujarat and offered a lucrative job to Sanjay in Singapore.
They asked Yevale to submit all documents and Rs 80,000 as fees for different services. Yevale did as instructed by the accused, but failed to get a job. In October, Mohammad Hussaini, a resident of Camp, lost Rs 1,69,000 while he was seeking a job in America.
He was contacted by an oil and natural gas company in New Jersey. The company asked him to send a scanned copy of his passport, photograph, and the copy of interview form sent by the company. After mailing the details to the company, the complainant was asked to transfer Rs 40,000 on an account number sent to him on email, in order to complete the job procedure.
After making the payment of Rs 40,000, the complainant received another email, which asked him to transfer Rs 1,29,000 to complete visa procedure, health insurance and some other formalities. Later, even after completing the formalities, Mohammad failed to get a job.
Cybercriminals tracking victims’ digital footprint
Prakash Dnyandev Jambhale (50), a resident of Ganesh Nagar, lodged a complaint in this case at Dighi police station on March 2, 2017. Jambhale was getting Rs 121 less in his pension amount for two months, so he filed an online complaint on a portal on February 4, 2017. Soon, he got a call from a person claiming to be a staffer of ‘complaint board’. The person sought his debit card details. Jambhale gave confidential information about his debit card. After some time, he found that Rs 45,158 was withdrawn from his bank account.
Criminals look for victims’ mobile wallets
On February 2, Mangesh Gujjar (31) received a call from an unidentified person, who claimed to be calling from the credit card department of State Bank of India. The person asked for Mangesh’s credit card details and the moment he parted with his card details, Rs 20,000 was transferred out of his account and into a Paytm account. Following this, Mangesh approached the Swargate police station and lodged a case of cheating.
Sextortion
A man was booked by the Hinjawadi police in November for allegedly blackmailing a couple after the accused had filmed private moments of a couple with the help of a selfie stick in a housing society on Pune-Bengaluru highway.