The portal is directly linked to all banks, payment gateways from Paytm, Google Pay to Razorpay and several police forces across the country. (Representational/File)The trend of helpless cyber crime victims unsuccessfully running around from pillar to post trying to get their money back is witnessing a change in Mumbai, thanks to CyberSafe – a portal that the Union government had come up with to tackle cyber crime nearly three years ago.
However, the portal (www.cybersafe.gov.in), inaugurated by the Centre in collaboration with a host of fintech companies in August 2019, was hardly used by the Mumbai police.
A training session was conducted by the cyber police on using the portal and each police station in Mumbai was provided a login ID. Ever since, some police stations have managed to save money lost by several cyber crime victims with the help of the portal.
For instance, Saki Naka resident Munna Shaikh was in Ghatkopar when he lost Rs 25,500 to a cyber criminal. He approached the local Pant Nagar police station, where a police team created an “incident ticket” on the CyberSafe portal, which can be accessed only by law enforcement agencies.
The portal is directly linked to all banks, payment gateways from Paytm, Google Pay to Razorpay and several police forces across the country.
The incident ticket seeks details like the name of the person, the amount lost, the payment gateway used to pay the criminal and how the crime took place.
In Shaikh’s case, the cyber criminals had deposited his money in a Paytm wallet. Once the incident ticket is created on the portal, it alerts the concerned parties – in this case the Paytm customer service.
Within a few hours, the police received an email from Paytm, stating that the Rs 25,500 had been transferred to Federal Bank. It also provided the name of the fraudster’s account holder, his account number and the email ID of the nodal person at the bank.
A police constable then sent an email to the bank, attaching a notice under Section 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code (summons to produce a document as evidence), asking for a debit freeze on the account. This means that while money can be credited in the account, nobody can withdraw money.
Accordingly, before the money could be transferred anywhere else from this particular account, there was a stop on withdrawals and within three days, the Rs 25,500 was transferred to Shaikh’s account.
The seamless communication that the portal encourages allows for the money to be returned even if a person takes a few days to complain.
Prior to this, on most occasions, if Shaikh would have approached the police after three days of the incident, he would have been told that it was too late to retrieve the money. Even if the police would have tried, getting through to the nodal authorities of service providers and banks would have taken days. During this time, the money would have generally been withdrawn by cyber criminals.
In cases of cyber crimes, criminals also tend to route the money through various bank accounts to hide its trail. CyberSafe proves effective here, too, as every bank that has received the money provides details about the bank to which the money has been transferred, along with providing contact details of the nodal officer of that bank.
“Usually cyber criminals keep moving money between banks and e-wallets. With this portal, however, it is easy to track the money and contact the concerned financial institution, which replies in real time,” the officer said.
The officer added that in most cyber crime cases, the police are reluctant to register FIRs, as they know that it is difficult to arrest criminals operating from far-flung areas. Victims, too, are mostly interested in getting their money back without getting into legal issues.
“The beauty of this system is that the focus is on getting the money back first. We can later register an FIR and follow the legal process. However, on most occasions, once people get their money, they are not interested in following up,” the officer said.
In addition to real-time coordination, the portal also allows for blacklisting numbers and bank accounts used for fraudulent transactions in its “negative database”.
An officer said that recently, Mumbai Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar had asked all police stations to ensure they use the app. A source, however, said that the challenge here will be to ensure all police stations use the portal.
“Even now, of the over 90 police stations in the city, not more than 10-15 may be using it. Once all police stations start using it, it will make a big difference,” said an officer.
On its site, CyberSafe describes itself as an application developed jointly by FCORD – a coordination group for taking on fake currency set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs – and the private sector to make the digital payment ecosystem safe and secure, enhance the faith of the common man in the platform and assist law enforcement agencies in resolving and preventing such crimes.
FCORD, in association with several private technology partners, had developed the pilot application, CyberSafe, as an information-sharing platform between law enforcement agencies and fintech entities.
A total of 19 fintech entities and 23 police forces across the country are now linked to the portal providing real-time updates.
As per its June 30, 2020 report, 14,1549 incident tickets had been reported on the portal, amounting to Rs 181.95 crore. In its 34-month-long existence, the app was used by 4,965 officers of law enforcement agencies, 13,2138 unique phone numbers used for fraud were added and 19 entities have been integrated. Around 10,000 cases were registered in June alone.
As per the data in terms of frauds reported by law enforcement agencies, the West Bengal Police tops the list by reporting frauds worth over Rs 38 crore. The Maharashtra Police has, so far, reported frauds worth over Rs 10 crore on the app and raised 6,380 incident tickets. In terms of incident tickets raised, at 41,970, Uttar Pradesh Police tops the country.