62% cybercrime complaints in 2020 linked to financial frauds, says Delhi Police

Sixty-two per cent of the cybercrime complaints lodged in 2020 were related to financial frauds, police said in a statement here.

The Delhi Police said a spurt was witnessed in incidents of cybercrime during the coronavirus lockdown.

Twenty-four per cent of the complaints were related to social media, primarily online harassment, and the rest 14 per cent were related to crimes such as hacking and data theft.

“Among the complaints of various cybercrime received, the predominant ones are of online financial frauds, accounting for around 62 per cent of the total,” the statement said.

A perusal of the complaints received by the Delhi Police reveals that cases of extortion by morphing videos of people, especially related to sexual conduct, have increased manifold.

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.

The Delhi Police has 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 or managers who were operating these, the statement said.

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.

Another modus operandi commonly used is to extort money after threatening legal action in respect of tax violations, social security number misuse or immigration rule violations, the statement said.

The cybercrime unit of the Delhi Police has been taking stringent action against criminals and arrested more than 214 offenders, the statement said.

In the last 10 days, a total of five illegal call centres have been busted, it added.

Due to the action taken by police, 278 profiles containing objectionable content were blocked. This includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube accounts. The maximum number of accounts -- 140 that were blocked -- were of Twitter, it added.