Apparently afraid of social humiliation, many who have lost money to the trickery of cyber scammers on Facebook are reluctant to take legal measures.
Instead of proceeding with cases, the complainants choose to leave the scene after getting the fake social media accounts of their friends deleted from the virtual space with the cyber cell’s support.
Officials with the Kozhikode cyber police station said they were yet to register a First Information Report (FIR) on Facebook frauds thanks to reluctance on the part of the victims. Some do not even approach the cyber cell after closing fake accounts using the personal reporting option, they added.
“A major reason for the trend is that many of those who have reported such incidents have not lost huge amounts. They also fear that any follow-up legal proceedings may spoil their peace,” said a senior officer with the cyber police station. According to him, those with high-profile jobs are concerned about losing their face owing to a reckless act.
Meanwhile, a few who recently reported fake profiles claimed that cyber crime investigators too were finding it hard to track the invisible offenders mostly operating from north India. It was also evident in some suo motu cases that were registered after tracking phone numbers and bank accounts of suspected persons, the officials said, adding that the police were mostly focusing on online awareness campaigns.
In some initial incidents, investigation teams had collected the telephone numbers and bank accounts used by offenders. However, it was later found that scammers were cunningly misusing multiple bank accounts they had opened in the names of illiterate people who were totally unaware of modern banking services. The feasible option then was to report such accounts to the banks and get them blocked.
