Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Though Bhopal district cyber crime cell has been issuing scores of advisories about changing modus operandi of crooks, people seem to be falling prey to fraud due to their greed for making money, fear of ignominy when an unidentified crook approaches them to defame them and not making efforts to go through advisories in this regard. Two such cases reported in the city in last one week are an indicator.
In a case reported on Wednesday, a man lost Rs 68 lakh to fraudsters who posed as crime branch officials from Mumbai. The Bhopal district cyber cell officials said man who lost the amount was educated and aware of such instances. But he was petrified when crooks posing as Mumbai crime branch officials revealed his Aadhaar card details and told him that his parcel being sent to Taiwan contained drugs.
In another case reported from Sant Hirdaram Nagar on Saturday, a furniture shop owner lost Rs 45 lakh to a share company trading website, which was given an authentic look by the crooks. Cyber cell sub inspector Sunil Raghuwanshi, who is investigating the case, told Free Press that the victim was aware of fake website scam. “But owing to his greed, he thought of making quick bucks and ended up losing the amount to crooks,” he said.
Senior officials of the cyber crime cell said that the cyber crooks often take advantage of people’s psychological traits like greed, fear and negligence to extort money from them.
Data leak: Bone of contention
Assistant commissioner of police, district cyber crime cell, Sujeet Tiwari, said in majority of cases, crooks had access to data of target persons, which they revealed to them while committing the fraud. Owing to this, the target feels he/she is talking to an authorised person. In the process, their money and private data get compromised. “Data of people is not secured anywhere and employees of several companies leak it to fraudsters for meagre amounts of money, which is as small as sum of Rs 3,000,” Tiwari added.
