7 of 10 cybercrime cases in state of digital arrest

Digital arrest has become a successful trick for cyber fraudsters to dupe innocent people of their hard-earned money. In Himachal Pradesh, seven out of 10 registered cases of cybercrime are of digital arrest.

Under this fraud, the scamsters, posing as police officials or CID officials, contact the victim via video and audio calls, and then proceed to threaten them. The scamsters introduce themselves as police officials and proceed to accuse the victim or one of his relatives of a crime.

The fraudsters deceive the victim by claiming that one of his/her close relatives has been accused of a serious crime and will be arrested soon. When the victim gets panicky, the scamsters assure him that charges will be dropped only after money is paid to them.

DIG, CID Cybercrime, Mohit Chawla says that many a time, the scamsters use Artificial Intelligence to mimic the voices of the family members of the victim. He adds that most of the time, the victims are either senior citizens or middle-aged persons.

He says that the police never does online interrogation, therefore, people should disconnect and ignore such calls. "If in doubt, they should first contact the family member against whom serious allegations have been made to confirm the situation before making any financial transaction," he adds.

The DIG has appealed to people to be aware of cyber scams and immediately report any instance of such crime on the toll-free cybercrime helpline number - 1930.

At present, around 310 cases of cybercrime are being registered in the state every day. Besides digital arrest, scamsters also try to dupe people by promising them exorbitant returns via trading in stocks, posing as custom officers, credit card frauds, money transferred by mistake and KYC expiration.

To tackle cybercrimes in the state, the cyber wing’s ‘CY-Station’ has been established in Shimla. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had inaugurated the station recently.

The Chief Minister, while inaugurating the station, had said that the ‘CY-Station’ would enable real-time registration of complaints, particularly in case of financial frauds. He added that the station would facilitate the blocking or lien marking of defrauded amounts through the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System.

Scamsters pose as police officials

The scamsters, posing as police or CID officials, contact a person through video and audio calls and then proceed to threaten him