The chief executive officer of Odisha’s e-governance agency on Thursday fell victim to cybercrime when someone hacked into his WhatsApp account and duped his friends of ₹7 lakh faking financial distress.
Manoj Kumar Pattnaik, chief executive officer of Odisha computer application centre, that powers several e-governance initiatives of the Odisha government, alleged that five of his contacts sent ₹7 lakh to a bank account since Tuesday afternoon after receiving WhatsApp messages that he needed money for treatment. Assuming the messages as genuine, some of the close contacts of Pattnaik transferred money to the bank and UPI accounts shared by the fraudster.
“I received an unknown call on my WhatsApp on Tuesday afternoon. The caller did not utter a word and I hung up after around 30 seconds,” said Patnaik.
Hours later, Patnaik realised the hacking of his WhatsApp account when some of his friends told him that they had received a message from him asking for money. Soon, he was flooded with phone calls from his contacts, including his office staff who sent money to the fraudster.
The cybercrime wing later registered a complaint on its own with a deputy superintendent of police taking up the investigation of the case. Patnaik said he would lodge a formal complaint with the police on Friday. Some of his contacts, who became victims of the phishing messages, have already lodged complaints with the police.
{{/usCountry}}The cybercrime wing later registered a complaint on its own with a deputy superintendent of police taking up the investigation of the case. Patnaik said he would lodge a formal complaint with the police on Friday. Some of his contacts, who became victims of the phishing messages, have already lodged complaints with the police.
{{/usCountry}}Ishaan Sinha, a renowned cybercrime investigator who has trained police forces of several states to fight cybercrime, said Patnaik may have fallen victim to a cybercrime practice called social engineering in which cybercriminals use cloning software and spoof call software to mimic a person.
“These people trawl social media sites to see people with high net worth and use social engineering that involves manipulating people into breaking normal security procedures and best practices to gain unauthorized access to their contact list. They then mimic the person and call or send messages to their contacts making them believe to be coming from a genuine person. The number which the fraudsters call or send messages from can be a different number than that of the victim’s, but to his contacts, it appears to be genuine,” said Sinha.
He said such frauds normally operate from Jamtara in Jharkhand, Bharatpur in Rajasthan, Mewat in Haryana, Mathura and Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. “Despite all their practices, these scamsters do get caught,” he said.
As per the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau, last year Odisha saw a 30% jump in cybercrimes compared to 2019 with many unsuspecting people falling victim to such crimes during online payment and UPI transactions. A total of 1,931 incidents of cybercrime were reported in 2020, an increase of 30.03 per cent from 1,485 in the previous year and a staggering 129 per cent hike from 843 in 2018, the NCRB report stated.
The rate of cybercrime was 4.2 per lakh population in Odisha, higher than the national rate of 3.7, the NCRB’s ‘Crime in India 2020’ report said. With 220 cases, Odisha recorded the highest incidents of defamation, morphing and indecent representation of women.