Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
Shah was a part of the gang that cheated people online by sending emails about lucrative jobs, conducting fake interviews and demanding money. Image Source: IANS
As technology develops, cybercriminals adopt new strategies to prey on individuals and real money. Identity theft, phishing scams, credit card fraud, romance scams, investment fraud, and more are some of the frequent cybercrimes.
Dhaval Mahendra Shah, a 46 year old business man from Bhayandar, a suburb of Mumbai was arrested on Wednesday, April 6, 2023 by the Kashimira Police in a job fraud case. He was detained for cheating people by making false employment offers from prestigious companies. Shah was wanted in a number of states and was handed over to the Telangana Police for defrauding a woman of Rs 72 lakh by promising her a job with Microsoft. Shah was a part of the gang that cheated people online by sending emails about lucrative jobs, conducting fake interviews and demanding money. The police said that Dhaval Shah was also member of the gang that duped people online. M Raju, Police Inspector from Ranchakoda Police station in Telangana said that Shah’s gang used to send emails to random people after purchasing their data and email ids from the dark web.
Shah and his partners used to advertise high-paying job openings in reputed companies in their emails. After conducting telephonic or online interviews with the applicants, they would demand payment in exchange for the allegedly high-paying positions. According to Raju, he received a complaint from a 26-year-old lady in 2022 who claimed to have received an email from the scammers. When she responded to the email, the scammers offered her a job at Microsoft and held multiple rounds of interviews while posing as representatives of the American IT giant.
Dhaval Shah’s arrest in a cybercrime case once again highlighted the ugly side of technology and one of the most serious crimes in the country. According to various experts, cybercrime is one of the easiest crimes to execute and the fraudster can remain unknown for a long period of time.
Cyber fraud, commonly referred to as online fraud or internet fraud, is a crime in which a victim is defrauded of money through the internet. Fraudsters can target a person and get in touch with them via SMS, call, email, or other methods in order to obtain personal information. They can also send a malicious link to websites or apps in order to break into a computer, mobile device, or network and obtain sensitive data like bank account numbers, credit card information, social security numbers, and personal information.
Source: National Crime Records Bureau
The data from National Crime Records Bureau clearly shows that the cases of cybercrime in India are rising at an alarming rate. The cases of cybercrime nearly doubled from 27,248 in 2018 to 44,735 in 2019. The highest number of cybercrime case were registered in the year 2021. In 2021, 14,007 cases of cybercrime were registered in which the victim was duped of money by the fraudster. 1,624 cases of debit card and credit card frauds were also recorded separately. Around 4,823 cases of online banking fraud were also registered in 2021 along with 1,899 cases of ATM related frauds, 2,028 cases of One Time Password (OTP) were also reported.
Talking about the motive behind committing the cybercrime, fraud was the most common motive as out of the total 52,974 cases of cybercrime in 2021, 32,230 cases of fraud were registered. In case of motives, fraud was followed by sexual exploitation (4,555) and extortion (2,883). The total number of cases for investigation in 2021 stood at 73,884. In 21,229 cases of cybercrime, the accused was set free due to insufficient evidence or because he/she was untraced and lack of clues. Even though the statistics demonstrate the severity of the rising rate of cybercrime, it is troubling since they are based solely on reported incidents. Therefore, if we take into account the cases that go unreported, the actual incidents of cybercrime would be significantly higher.
In case of states, the southern state of Telangana had topped the chart as it recorded 10,303 cases of cyber crimes in 2021. Telangana was followed by Uttar Pradesh which reported 8,829 cyber crimes in 2021. The eastern states of Assam and Odisha also became the targets of cyber crimes as Odisha reported 2,037 cases of cyber crimes and Assam was fifth on the list with 4,846 cyber crimes.
As technology develops, cybercriminals adopt new strategies to prey on individuals and real money. Identity theft, phishing scams, credit card fraud, romance scams, investment fraud, and more are some of the frequent cybercrimes.
We as responsible citizens and netizens, must learn to carefully navigate the cyber space and should remain vigilant at all the times. The Government of India has been taking a number of steps to address the cybercrimes. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal is a website run by the Indian government that enables victims and complainants to submit online reports of cybercrime complaints, including cyber fraud. This portal accepts complaints on cybercrimes, with a focus on those that target women and children.
