KOCHI: In spite of all awareness campaigns, cyber fraud incidents are gripping the city with 10 cases registered in Kochi on Friday alone. As many as Rs 1.9 crore was lost by 10 Kochi residents in a single day with cases being reported at different police stations in the city.
As many as three cases of cheating were reported at Infopark police station, two cases each at Thrikkakara and Maradu police stations and one case each at Kadavanthra, Hill Palace and Cyber police stations. The people who lost their money include youngsters and elderly persons above the age of 70.
A 73-year-old native of Kadavanthra was contacted by a person claiming to be an employee of an e-commerce platform. The victim was told to gain high profits by investing in the platform. Thus the victim expecting high returns transferred Rs 76 lakh on multiple occasions. However, after sending the money, neither the profit nor the invested money was returned to him. In another incident, a Thiruvankulam native lost Rs 7.21 lakh after he was offered double profit within five minutes after investing with a share trading platform. Initially, the victim invested a small amount and immediately received the promised profit. But, after investing a major amount, the accused person could not be reached.
Between January and June this year, Kochi witnessed more than 400 cyber fraud cases in which victims lost over Rs 30 crore. “There are two major modus adopted by cyber fraudsters to swindle money. The first modus is taking investments promising high returns in share trading platforms. They use the names of well-known share brokerage firms to cheat people. The second modus is extorting money from people after impersonating police officials and claiming that parcels with the names of the victims are being seized. Apart from it, we get online job frauds frequently,” a senior police officer said.
Police officials said that they were running awareness campaigns online and offline on a daily basis. But still, people are falling into the traps of fraudsters easily.
“We generally ask complainants whether they are not aware of similar cyber frauds. In a majority of cases, the complainants say that they have heard about such incidents of cyber fraud in various media. But they never expected to become its target. People must anticipate potential fraud when unknown people contact them with attractive investment schemes, jobs and impersonating police officials,” he said.
However, it is not just common men, even major business firms in Kochi are becoming easy targets of cyber fraudsters. Recently, a marine exporting firm based in Kochi lost around `50 lakh after fraudsters created a fake WhatsApp account in the name of the company’s MD.
Using the fake WhatsApp account, the accused sent messages to the executive director asking to transfer Rs 50 lakh to an account of the accused person. As the MD could not be contacted, the executive director transferred the amount. A case was registered at Ernakulam South Police Station on Thursday.
Three held in cyber crime case
KOCHI: Three youth were arrested for allegedly swindling I4.5 lakh from a woman in a cyber fraud, at Kakkanad on Saturday. The arrested persons are Binshad, 19, Sinas, 33, and Shameel, 18, of Palakkad. The suspects ran an advertisement for an online part-time job on social media platforms. When the woman approached the suspects via a social media platform, an online link was shared with her. The job given to the woman was to write reviews about websites. The victim was given payment for the work initially. However, the suspects asked the woman to invest money in the platform to gain more profit. Thus, they swindled I4.5 lakh from the woman. Based on the bank account used for online fraud, the suspects were arrested by the police. They were produced before the court and remanded in judicial custody.