KOCHI: The Kochi cyber police have launched a probe into the fake websites and Facebook pages created in the name of St George Forane Church, Edappally, to receive donations. The case was registered on July 14 based on a complaint filed by church vicar Fr Antony Madathumpady.As per the FIR, fake websites and FB pages were created using the name and photographs of the church to make people believe that they were original. Several such websites and FB pages were in existence for the past 10 years, the FIR stated.
“The matter came to light when the official website of St George Forane Church was launched recently. The parish authorities suspect that the people behind the fake websites might have received donations when the construction of the new church was going on a few years ago. Also, there were several FB pages with bank account details to accept donations. The parish authorities claimed that they had not sought any such donations during the construction of the church,” said a police officer.
The case has been registered under Section 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act.According to the police, some of the websites and FB pages were found deleted recently. However, the police will collect information regarding the personal accounts used to create the websites and FB pages. “With the assistance of Facebook, we can identify the email ids or mobile phone numbers used to create the FB pages and sites.
However, locating those behind them will be a difficult task. We will soon approach the authorities concerned requesting to share the required information. The first task is to identify the persons behind it and question them to check whether they had accepted any donations using these accounts,” the officer said.Creating fake FB pages in the name of religious and charitable organisations is a usual method of scammers, the officer pointed out.