Chennai: Public lost Rs 25 crore in 1.5 years to cyber criminals, says police
Chennai: City’s denizens have lost over Rs 25 crore to cyber criminals in the past one and half years through phishing and other forms of online fraud. While the amount lost in the year 2016 alone amounts to Rs 16.12 crore, the public has lost Rs 7.16 crore this year as of June, police said.
Of the lost amount, police were able to recover only 25 per cent, according to police officers. Addressing the issue and to create awareness among public and bank officials, city police commissioner A. K. Viswanathan conducted a meeting with representatives from the banks at the commissionerate on Thursday.
Officials from the Central Crime Branch (CCB) who deal with bank fraud cases were present during the meeting. Police officers, part of the meeting, told DC that all sorts of online fraud - Vishing, Phishing, Smishing (SMS), Sim swapping online fraud, ATM fraud - were discussed.
According to the statistics with the CCB, there has been an increase in the number of debit card fraud cases this year with 1,106 cases reported until May while in 2016, the number of cases reported was 852.
Bank officials told police that the public fall for fraudsters and have been sharing OTP (One Time Password) details and other card details in spite of repeated advice from the banks.
“We have advised the bank officials to set up awareness camps for their customers in their regions about online fraud. The banks have also been asked to send messages also in regional languages to their customers in case the customer doesn’t understand English,” a senior police officer said.
One of the main contentions of the meeting, however, was extending co-operation to the police personnel in case of a bank fraud, police said. According to a senior police officer with the CCB, “Only nine per cent of the complainants filed a police complaint within 24 hours of the incident.” Police have received 1, 490 petitions so far this year for online fraud.
SBI customers highest among online fraud victims
According to the statistics provided by the City police, customers of the State Bank of India (SBI) have filed the most petitions of online financial fraud with the City police.
Police said that they received 547 petitions from customers of SBI until May this year with loss pegged at Rs 3.38 crore.
284 customers from the Indian Bank and 107 from ICICI bank have given petitions so far this year, according to the police.
