The number of recorded online related fraud cases ''has doubled'' during the community quarantine because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) cybercrime division officer said on Saturday.

In a virtual briefing, NBI Cybercrime Division executive officer, Michelle Valdez did not give numbers of recorded online related fraud cases but only said it has doubled because the cyber criminals are taking advantage of the situation.

“I don’t have specific number on my hand today but we know that the number of computer related fraud cases has doubled, one of which is the phishing attacks where cyber criminals take advantage of the situation of our citizens who stay in their houses,” she said.

“We take hold of our cellphones and computers for our daily transaction so with this our people were victimized by giving their personal details, bank details and other personal details where unauthorized transactions were made,” she added.

Valdez said other online cases include shopping scams, donation scams, online sexual exploitation of children and fake news proliferation.

“Other cases related are the online shopping scams, because the people cannot go out of their houses, we tend to purchase items online and what we do not see is that it is being proliferated by the bogus sellers, wherein they sell items that are really not existing. After we paid them the corresponding price they will just disappear or the items were not delivered to our addresses,” she said.

“Other than that we also have donation scams where they invite the public to donate PPEs and other items for our frontliners but they are not legitimate or authorized entity to distribute these items. So the cash donations will be received by other (criminals) instead of supposed recipients of these donations,” she added.

Valdez said the NBI Cybercrime Division is coordinating with concerned agencies in response to the reported cases.

“We are in close coordination with the Department of Justice, Office of Cybercrime along also with the other human trafficking division of NBI. We also coordinate with social media administration like Facebook and other social sites and platforms to pin down the pages where child pornography materials is being proliferated,” she said. Robina Asido/DMS