Cybercriminals cheat school in name of fee payment

New delhi: From posing as law enforcement officials to job providers, fraudsters always change their modus operandi and find innovative ways to dupe people. In the latest case, cybercriminals duped a school of Rs 95,000 on the pretext of submitting fees.

One of the school officials informed police that he received a call from a person, who identified himself as a parent of a student studying in the school. He wanted to pay a fee of Rs 15,000 of one Ankit who was studying in Class 8.

"I told that person that he can pay the fees but the receipt will be given on the next day," he said. After some time, the accused sent one QR code and asked the complainant

to scan.

"I scanned the QR code and instead of crediting Rs 15,000, money amounting to Rs 95,000 was debited from the school account. When I asked that person about the debit money, he said it happened by mistake and the money will be credited back. However, no money was credited," the complainant told police.

A case under Section 420 of IPC was registered.

The Delhi Police has recently released a data of cybercrime which revealed that the number of complaints of various types of cybercrimes was around 1,500 in January 2020, which increased to around 3,000 by November. Moreover, during the lockdown months and immediately thereafter, there was a significant increase in the incidents of cybercrime with the number of complaints reaching a peak of around 4,500 in April, May, June and July.

"Among the complaints of various cyber crimes received, the predominant ones are of online financial fraud, accounting for around 62 per cent of the total. 24 per cent of the complaints have been social media related, primarily online harassment, and the rest 14 per cent is of other cybercrimes like hacking, identity theft, data theft," said Delhi Police in a press statement.