Dealing with cyber crime cases is no easy task for the police, especially since the scammer is nameless and faceless, operating from behind a screen or a phone. The stolen money too vanishes quickly — jumping from account to account before it ends up being converted into cryptocurrency. Several police officers The Indian Express spoke to across Delhi and the NCR acknowledged that there has been a spike in cases and said quick filing of complaints is key to recovering the stolen money.
Data with Delhi Police shows that in the first seven months of this year, till July 30, cyber fraud of Rs 600 crore was reported.
The IFSO (Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations), a special police unit that deals with cyber fraud cases exceeding Rs 50 lakh, registered 240 cases till August. Out of them, 150 are stock market frauds. In 2023, the total number of cases the IFSO registered was 137, a police officer said.
“Rise in cases in just a year has been huge. Most of the increase has been driven by financial fraud and stock market scams. Two things scammers prey upon are greed and fear of victims — greed to make more money and fear of losing it all. This makes victims put more and more money, hoping to get something back,” said ACP (IFSO) Manoj Kumar.
“Once you click on a link that promises any kind of financial gain, you are touching a 440-volt live wire. Any detail you put online — photos, bank account details — it’s going to be there forever,” he added.
The ACP also spoke about the difficulty in tracking the money: “Many fake investment apps now demand investments from victims in crypto wallets. Or, they sometimes convert it into cryptocurrency before taking it out. This has made tracking even more difficult as digital currency is still not properly regulated.”
In neighbouring Gurgaon, 697 FIRs were lodged from January till July 31 this year. In 2010, the city saw just 100 FIRs — of these, 29 were job scams and net banking frauds.
Police also arrested 953 people this year as compared to last year when 645 were held. Residents have lost Rs 220 crore till May this year, a massive jump from 2023 when the duped amount totalled Rs 210 crore in the whole year. Police said they managed to recover Rs 43 crore this year.
Sidhant Jain, DCP South, Gurgaon, said finance-related cybercrime in the city has been evolving. The new addition to the list is the one carried out under the pretext of stock market investment. He also said the faster a crime is reported, the easier it is to trace the money. “When people raise an alarm with the bank and file a complaint on 1930, the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, banks are intimated and before the money could be transferred from one account to another or taken out through an ATM, they immediately put the accounts on hold. The probability of getting money back in such scams is higher if you are proactive.”
Vivek Ranjan Rai, ACP (Cyber Crime Police station), Noida, has a note of advice — don’t share any personal details and attend audio and video calls from unknown numbers.
“Anyone posing as any official in any call, asking for any kind of money or data cannot be real,” he added.
Umesh Chandra Naithani, SHO of the cyber police station in Noida’s Sector 36, said only two things are needed to execute such frauds — a SIM card and an account number. “You can easily get both in our country… In normal crimes, we find the location of the accused and catch them, but in cyber fraud cases, we need to find the money trail,” he said.
Sub-Inspector Sanat Yadav, who is also in-charge of S P City Office-Cyber Crime Cell, Gautam Buddha Nagar, said: “50 to 100 cases are registered per day on the NCRB portal. 10 cases are registered here every day and more than 200 cyber cases are registered across the district in a day.”
This cyber crime cell registers cases where the cheated amount is less than 5 lakh; cases involving amounts higher than this are registered at the Sector 36 Cyber Crime Police Station.
Yadav also said the nature of the crime keeps changing: “If there is an IPL season around, then people are duped in the name of cheaper tickets; if there is an election, the fraud starts in the name of a political party.”
On how cyber fraud trends have changed in the last year, a Delhi Police officer on condition of anonymity said fraudsters have now moved outside India. “Till last year, many cases related to fake customer care calls were based in India. Now, they come from Dubai, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries. Either through OTP or forwarding a message, your account details registered with your number are accessed. Also, the money is moved across multiple mule accounts. We manage to block some of it after getting a complaint, but multiple accounts have to be simultaneously blocked for that,” said the officer with Outer North cyber police station.
Mule accounts are bank accounts that are created either using fake IDs and SIM cards or are bought from individuals to be used for moving money.
How are these opened? A cyber police officer explained: “Banks give targets to their branches. To comply, many officials at these branches allow accounts to be opened without proper background checks. Money coming in and out of these accounts is also not tracked diligently. Almost all cyber crimes are done using mule accounts.”
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