Investigators attribute the vast difference between frozen and recovered money to the absence of a centralised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for recovering frozen money.
Bengaluru: Of the Rs 1,242 crore lost by Bengalureans to cybercrimes in the first eight months of this year, banks have frozen Rs 513 crore, or a little over 40%. However, investigators have managed to recover only Rs 111 crore.
Investigators attribute the vast difference between frozen and recovered money to the absence of a centralised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for recovering frozen money.
When a victim reports a cybercrime within the ‘golden hour’ and the bank freezes the recipient account, the victim must obtain the local court’s permission to defreeze the account and reclaim the money.
But there’s a catch.
“If the same bank account is used in another cybercrime, investigators probing that specific case also freeze the same account. If the victim in that case also gets the court permission, it puts the bank in a dilemma about whom to return the money to,” a senior police officer explained.
While some banks release the money to the victim who gets the court permission first, many banks do not defreeze the account at all, he added.
A top police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the issue and said they were exploring legal ways to solve it.