As of May 17, Telangana has blocked 137 Skype IDs involved in various cases of blackmail, extortion and digital scams by cyber criminals posing as officials from the Enforcement Agencies, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Narcotics Department and other enforcement agencies. This comes in the backdrop of the ongoing crackdown by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) in which over 1,000 Skype IDs and numerous mule accounts and mobile numbers have been blocked.
Around 1,500 WhatsApp and virtual numbers and over 500 mule accounts in three hotspots - Hyderabad, parts of Nirmal, and Cyberabad - are also under the radar of the Telangana State Cyber Security Bureau (TSCSB) with many already blocked, data shared by senior officials in the department revealed.
As part of the nationwide programme, about 800-900 mule accounts have been identified in Telangana and flagged to the department for verification.
“There are two lines of investigation – one is to track the source of communication and the other is to follow the money trail. At the State-level, we are following the second approach for identifying mule accounts to which money is first sent by the victims,” said Davender Singh, Superintendent of Police, TSCSB.
“The challenge however is that such crimes are borderless, and money moves in accounts across the States and countries very swiftly,” he added.
So far, the State has been able to put on hold ₹2.8 crore involved in such cases in April.
Of the 8,669 cyber crime cases reported in the State in April, 2,669 (30.79%) were of impersonation and citizens have lost ₹21.04 crore in just a month. Of these, fraudsters impersonated policemen in around 1,400 cases. With the cases increasing every month, the count of such accounts and Skype IDs being used are only increasing by the hour.
“Priority is given to cases in which common cyber criminals are involved in multiple cases and lost amount is higher, “ explained the official. That being said, in over 90% cases registered in the State, the cyber criminals are from other parts of the country, he added.
In an overnight Skype call that began on May 15 by ‘Maharashtra Police’, a Cyberabad woman was conned of ₹60 lakh. The entire amount was put on hold for an hour of the incident following a complaint on the Cyber Crime Helpline 1930. In another such case from May 17, a 54-year-old from Hyderabad was conned of ₹5.26 lakh after receiving a call from ‘TRAI officer’ along with a fake arrest warrant.
