More than 130 cases of online fraud have been reported in the last three months in central Kolkata alone.
The cases recorded in the jurisdiction of 10 police stations in central Kolkata are only a small portion of what is reported across the city.
Police officers The Telegraph spoke to feel the actual number of fraud cases must be way higher as many do not report to the police fearing legal entanglement.
The central Kolkata cases include 10 electricity bill frauds, 23 social media frauds, 11 QR Code scanning frauds, six cases of impersonification fake army personnel frauds, five online job frauds, nine frauds through downloading mirroring apps and three hotel booking frauds, the police said.
“We have been able to intervene and recover Rs 12,80,594, which is almost one-third of the money swindled through online frauds reported in the last three months,” said a senior officer of the central division.
In the majority of the cases, the victims are elderly Kolkatans who have fallen prey to various modes of online fraud.
The officer added that it was alarming that despite multiple and repeated awareness campaigns, the fraudsters were finding new ways to dupe people.
“The maximum complaints we receive are related to the hacking of social media accounts and frauds carried out through fake social accounts. Fraudsters befriend vulnerable targets through Facebook and Instagram chats and then seek financial help from their potential targets,” said an officer.
Frauds through fake electricity bills — where the victim receives a text message informing that his or her power supply would be disconnected in a few hours if the pending electricity bills were not paid — often leads to a rush to pay the bills through a link sent by the fraudsters.
Police said another common way of defrauding people through an online trading portal was to pose as an army official and try to buy something through the online portal.
“Cheats pose as buyers of a product on an online trading platform and first win the trust of the seller by saying that they are from the army. Then they allegedly tell the seller to send some money to their account so that they can refund double the amount,” said an officer of the cyber cell of the central division.