Rising cyber-fraud leaves victims, cops hopping mad

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: Smartphones, essentially tiny computers, store a tremendous amount of personal information including bank account details, photos and other important data. However, amid all these developments, the question of how to avoid data theft from cyber-attacks remains unanswered.

Increasing dependency as well as addiction of mobile phones is causing unsuspecting users to fall prey to online fraudsters. Worse, even police personnel are not safe from cyber frauds in Bengaluru. A police constable attached to the City Armed Reserve (CAR) lost Rs 73,000 from his bank account after he unsuspectingly opened a link sent by a crook to his mobile phone.

Constable Bhadraiah, in his complaint to the South East Cyber Economics and Narcotics (CEN) police, said that he received a call from a person who introduced himself as a customer care executive of the State Bank of India (SBI) recently. "The caller claimed that my bank account would be deactivated if I did not update my PAN card details. He sent me a link and asked me to update the details," Bhadraiah said.

However, within a few minutes of updating his details on the page, the constable received several messages informing that money had been debited from his bank account. Speaking to News Trail, an officer from the CEN Police Station said that such cybercrime cases are mostly operated from different places in North India. "Fraudsters hide their identity while interacting with the victims," the officer said.

In 2022, the state police had managed to recover Rs 116 crore after tracking the sources of several cases. However, a huge number of cases are still pending at the investigation stage. According to reports, Bengaluru alone has lost Rs 517.6 crore to the menace since 2019, which comes to about Rs 35 lakh a day. As much as 72 per cent of all such money lost in the state was lost in Bengaluru.

According to a state-wide estimate, Karnataka residents lost more than Rs 722 crore in the same time frame (January 2019 to January 2023), or more than Rs 48 lakh each day. In Bengaluru, the amount increased by 66% and 49% from Rs 47.6 crore in 2019 to Rs 71.2 crore in the state in 2020. In 2021, the state witnessed a 37% increase, compared to a 24% increase in Bengaluru. The figures increased even higher in 2022, when losses totalled more than Rs 363 crore, including Rs 266.7 crore in Bengaluru.

Karnataka residents lost at least one crore rupees daily in 2023, with cybercriminals stealing more than 36 crore rupees from them, compared to more than Rs 84 lakh in Bengaluru. Just Rs 97.3 crore out of the total of Rs 722 crore was recovered by the authorities from cybercriminals; Rs 63 crore of a total Rs 97.3 crore was retrieved from cybercrime incidents in Bengaluru. Police are facing two challenges in apprehending cybercrime culprits.

One is the SIM card scam and another is the use of fake documents to open bank accounts. Cyber fraudsters normally have 100 to 200 mobile phone SIM cards in their possession. After they commit a cyber-fraud, they dispose of the SIM card used. When the police do trace the SIM cards, it will be in the name of some innocent person, they have revealed.