Saturday March 18, 2023 | 11:30 a.m.
With the aim of eradicating criminal activity that takes place through virtual connections, the Cybercrime Directorate was created by order of the Police Headquarters.
In this sense, the director of Cybercrime Sandra Ozuna commented that the complaints that are most received are those related to scams and grooming; what would be the sexual harassment of an adult person to a minor through the internet. Which, like any other crime, can be denounced in all the police stations of the provincial force.
With respect to virtual scams, it is important to know that criminals use various modalities, adapting to the social context and the new technological eras. As an example of this, it can be mentioned that during the coronavirus pandemic, criminals used the ruse of deception with alleged shifts for vaccination or delivery of subsidies by the state.
Currently, one of the mechanisms most used by scammers is to make a call citing any circumstance that is of interest, asking the victim for the validity code of the WhatsApp app, for example. Which once obtained allows you to access the cybercriminal, the contacts and thus request money transfers or loans in the event of a supposed misfortune.
Something similar to the aforementioned, occurs when criminals use unknown phone numbers and use false profiles, posing as a member of a service provider, requesting personal data from their victims.
Given this, the Cybercrime Directorate recommends that calls where they offer prizes, rewards or some kind of free benefit should always be suspected and that later, to access them, transfers, deposits or the transfer of bank codes must be made. It should be noted that the reporting of these crimes is essential for an investigation to be initiated, from then on the management intervenes and begins with the corresponding tasks.
It is worth mentioning that in 2021 the Cybercrime Department participated in 4,026 investigations. While in 2022 it intervened in a total of 4,675 and so far this year around 600 complaints have been received, managing to clarify them in a large percentage after exhaustive virtual follow-ups, mostly due to scams.
