Indians lose over Rs.1,750 crore to cyberfraud in early 2024
Indians lose over Rs.1,750 crore to cyberfraud in early 2024
Indians have lost over ₹1,750 crore to cyber criminals in the first four months of 2024, with more than 7.4 lakh cybercrime complaints registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal run by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), an average of 7,000 cybercrime complaints were recorded per day in May 2024. This marks a significant increase, with complaints jumping 113.7% between 2021 and 2023 and 60.9% from 2022 to 2023. Notably, 85% of these complaints were related to financial online fraud.
The I4C, established by the Ministry of Home Affairs, provides a framework for law enforcement agencies to tackle cybercrime. The number of cybercrime complaints has risen dramatically from 26,049 in 2019 to 7,40,957 in the first four months of 2024. The breakdown over the years is as follows:
– 2019: 26,049 complaints
– 2020: 2,57,777 complaints
– 2021: 4,52,414 complaints
– 2022: 9,66,790 complaints
– 2023: 15,56,218 complaints
– 2024 (January-April): 7,40,957 complaints
Victims were predominantly targeted through online investment fraud, gaming apps, algorithm manipulations, illegal lending apps, sextortion, and OTP forwards. In 2023, over 1 lakh investment scam cases were reported. For the first four months of 2024, digital arrests saw Indians losing ₹1.2 billion in 4,599 cases. Trading scams accounted for 20,043 cases, with ₹14.2 billion lost to cyber criminals.
Investment scams led to losses of ₹2.22 billion from 62,687 complaints, while dating apps caused losses of ₹132.3 million from 1,725 complaints. Overall, Indians lost ₹17.6 billion to cyber fraud from January to April 2024.
The I4C continues to collaborate with the RBI, DFS, banks, FIU, DOT, DIU, and fintech companies to tackle the misuse of mule accounts and abuse of telecom infrastructure by cyber criminals. It also monitors and blocks cybercrime infrastructure, including Skype accounts, Google and Meta advertisements, SMS headers, SIM cards, and bank accounts.
