Bengaluru Police Block 15,000 SIM Cards Used By Fraudsters For Cybercrime

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Command Centre) Ravindra Gadadi said it was a continuous effort and that such SIM cards would be disabled as soon as they found such suspicious numbers.

Bengaluru police identified and blocked over 15,000 SIM cards in the last three months used by fraudsters to allegedly cheat people in the city. The police took action after an increase in cybercrime cases across the city. The special drive which started on August 16 in order to check on cybercrime in Bengaluru resulted in identifying and blocking 15,378 SIM cards from August 16 to September 7, said the police, as per PTI.

The police said, the SIM cards mostly operated from the Northern part of India and were used by fraudsters in order to cheat the residents of Bengaluru with a uniform modus operandi. 

The cop said that there has been a surge in cases related to cybercrime in the city since January this year. The police claimed that they found the numbers, confirmed them, and immediately blocked them after receiving several complaints from victims who shared contact numbers through which they had been solicited by fraudsters with various schemes and ultimately conned.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Command Centre) Ravindra Gadadi said, "A single SIM card can be used by a fraudster to cheat many innocent people. So even if that single SIM card gets blocked immediately, then he can't reuse the same SIM to target other victims. This way it helps in reducing the number of victims and also brings down the number of cases."

He said it was a continuous effort and that such SIM cards would be disabled as soon as they found such suspicious numbers.

The authorities said that they are also looking through case files from past years to find more SIM cards that were used for fraudulent activity so they can block them as well if they are still in use for that purpose.