Indians lost more than Rs 1,750 crore to cyber criminals in the first four months of 2024 with over 7 lakh 40 thousand cybercrime complaints being registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal run by the Ministry of Home Affairs between January to April 2024. According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), on an average 7,000 cybercrime complaints were registered per day in May 2024, a jump of 113.7% between 2021-2023 and 60.9% from 2022-2023, and 85%of them were financial online frauds.
I4C is a body established by the MHA to provide a framework for law enforcement agencies to deal with cybercrime. The massive rise in the number of cases can be seen between 2019 to 2024 with 26,049 complaints being registered in 2019, 2,57,777 in 2020, 4,52,414 in 2021, 9,66,790 in 2022, 15,56,218 complaints in 2023 and 7,40,957 in 2024 in the first four months of the year.
Most victims were targeted using online investment fraud, gaming apps, algorithm manipulations, illegal lending apps, sextortion, and OTP forwards among others. Over 1 lakh investment scam cases were reported in 2023, according to I4C. In cases of digital arrests, Indians lost ₹1.2 billion in 4,599 cases in the first four months of 2024. Trading scams accounted for 20,043 cases in which ₹14.2 bn were lost to cyber criminals during the same period.
Similarly, ₹2.22 billion was lost in 62,687 complaints of investment scams, and dating apps caused a loss of ₹132.3 million in 1,725 complaints, states the I4C data. The total amount lost to cyber goons by Indians between January to April 2024 stood at ₹17.6 billion.
The I4C said that it is continuously working with RBI, DFS, Banks, FIU, DOT, DIU, and Fintech Companies on the use of mule accounts and abuse of telecom infrastructure by cyber criminals. It is further monitoring and blocking cybercrime infrastructure such as Skype accounts, Google and Meta advertisements, SMS headers, SIM cards, and bank accounts.
