Cybercrime police froze 80% of money lost to online fraudsters in Salem in 2024

Cybercrime police froze 80% of money lost to online fraudsters in Salem in 2024

The Salem District Cybercrime Police froze nearly 80% of the money that was stolen by online fraudsters in 2024 and returned ₹1.01 crore to the victims.

Every year, the complaints related to cybercrime are increasing across the State. The fraudsters woo people by attracting speech or advertisements. Through a link sent to mobile phones, the online fraudsters are looting several crores of money. The cybercrime police divided these cases into two categories: financial complaints and non-financial complaints.

Financial complaints including luring people to give jobs online, promising to provide high interest rate for money investment and online trading in foreign countries. The non-financial complaints include threatening to release the picture of a person, using the photos of other persons as WhatsApp profile photos, and morphing pictures.

In 2024, the Salem District Cybercrime Police received a total of 1,882 complaints (1,360 financial and 522 non-financial complaints). The police registered First Information Report (FIR) in 56 cases and provided a Community Service Register (CSR) in 1,826 cases. FIR will be registered in cases only that have high money value and in remaining cases, the police will provide CSRs and solve the cases. These 1,882 complaints were about loss of money to the tune of ₹12.80 crore. Due to quick action by the police, ₹10.20 crore (nearly 80%) of the money lost by the complainants were frozen. The police recovered and returned ₹1.01 crore to the victims in 2024.

The cybercrime police attached to Salem district police said that in most of the online fraud, educated people were the victims. The others mostly lose around ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 in online fraud. In this year, in a peculiar case, an unknown person threatened a woman to release her obscene picture on social media and demanded money. The woman approached the cybercrime police. The police found that the accused used a mobile phone from a person in an inebriated state at a Tasmac outlet and using that OTP, he installed WhatsApp on another mobile and threatened her. Within 12 hours, the police nabbed the person, the officials added.

Stating that people should come forward to lodge complaint with delay and fear, the cybercrime officials said that if people approached the police immediately, there were more chances of recovering the money or freezing it. Likewise, if women were threatened by these online fraudsters, they should approach the police immediately. “As many as 256 awareness programmes have been conducted including in schools and colleges regarding the online scams and we are also providing counselling to the victims,” the officials added.