Despite intensive awareness campaigns by the police and warning by banking firms, educated persons and working professionals have been found the most vulnerable segment to the recurring incidents of online frauds operated by scammers using fake income opportunities.
Figures released by the Crime Police station here reveal that the complainants who approached the police within the last 20 days alone lost around ₹1 crore in various online frauds.
The complainants who lost huge sums included doctors, engineers, IT professionals, retired government officers, and high-profile business persons. There were also many students and housewives who lost amounts between ₹1,000 and ₹10,000 in several other cases.
The majority of the complaints were related to financial cheating in connection with fraud job offers. Many of them fell as victims in their search for an additional income generation opportunity through easy means and work from home options. There were many incidents in which the fraudsters won the trust of the applicants by crediting some amount as initial reward to their accounts.
“The majority of those who were cheated by the scammers had dedicatedly followed the instructions of the scammers to click various suspicious links. Social media accounts were largely used in most of the cases for personal communication and to elicit account details,” said a senior cyber cell officer with the Kerala Police. He said there were many financially literate persons who lost their money through fake trading schemes.
Officers with the Cyber Police Station here pointed out that half-baked information circulated on social media about digital currencies and new trading platforms were misleading. Only a better awareness about modern cybercrimes in the era of artificial intelligence and the smartness to ignore unsafe links will ensure personal safety in the virtual space, they said.
According to police sources, there were many incidents in which senior citizens also lost their money by clicking spam links received through SMS. The recovery of such lost amounts would be very difficult as the number of such cases were steadily on the rise in the State, they said.
Published - July 21, 2023 07:09 pm IST
