Rs 5 lakh cyber fraud: FIR lodged after eight months

GURUGRAM: Eight months after Harish Arora of DLF Phase 4 filed a police complaint alleging unknown persons had hacked into his net banking account and withdrawn Rs 5 lakh, police registered an FIR in the case on Monday.
It all happened when Arora woke up in the morning of May 22, 2016, and saw two SMSes from his bank, intimating him about transactions of Rs 3 lakh and Rs 2 lakh he had apparently made.But he says he had not authenticated or made any of these.
He immediately informed his bank and lodged a complaint with Gurugram police, who passed the case to the cyber crime cell. Eight months later, an FIR was finally registered against unidentified persons at DLF Phase 1 police station on Monday, under Section 56D of IT Act and Section 420 (cheating) of IPC.
Arora is not the city’s lone hacking victim. The Gurugram cyber crime unit is reeling under pressure of around 2,500 cyber crime complaints from last year, while over 200 new complaints are filed every week.
Almost 50% of the cases involve hackers, pretending to be bank officials, demanding CVV numbers or net banking passwords from victims.
“There’ve been cases where people reveal their secret bank passwords to hackers. Often, they don’t confirm who is calling and ignore banks’ advice not to share such information on the phone,” said Manoj, a cyber crime investigator.
According to officials, probing such complaints is a fairly complex and time-consuming affair, as some agencies involved, such as Google and Facebook, are based abroad, and getting details from them requires a lot of persuasion. “Their servers are also located in different countries,” Manoj added.