Financial Crimes :
Any crime committed for financial gains is called “financial crime”. With the changed banking environment on account of IT and communication revolutions, banks are offering many services like internet and mobile banking, online trading and more of e commerce facilities. Examples of financial crimes are: cheating, credit card frauds, hacking into bank servers, etc.
Fraud and Cheating:
Fraud or cheating can be referred to any dishonest and intentional action to deprive or dupe a person of his or her money, assets or legal rights. As regards cyber crimes frauds and cheating can be classified into:
– On line cheating and/or fraud:-
This is the most popular cyber crime. Some examples are
(i) Offer jobs and require you to furnish sensitive information
(ii) Calls for sensitive information like bank account details, credit card details, pass words, user IDs. through the communications purported to have generated from the Income Tax authorities, Government Agencies, Reserve Bank of India and other Institutions
(iii) Informing about winning a lottery or identifying the person as the beneficiary of huge fortunes left by somebody. Such messages are usually circulated from foreign countries.
(iv) Encourage the customer to invest in schemes that offer unduly higher returns
(v) On line shopping may end up in the “buyer buys goods or services” when purchased articles are never delivered.
– Fraud committed on account of weakness in computer systems-
Input stage: data is falsified and entered in a manner that makes the data as genuine
Output stage: information is altered and/or destroyed to conceal un authorized transactions. Storage of data is altered or deleted
– On account of forgery: Forgeries are committed by using computers. Some examples are: printing of counterfeit currency notes, stamp papers, certificates. Modern printers and scanners photocopiers are used to carry out such frauds.
Information Theft: Information theft arises when confidential information is stolen for various reasons either by intruders to the IT system and /or by insiders. It can result in situations such as
(i) the reputation of an entire organization is lost (ii) customer confidential information/data is damaged (iii) regulatory violations are exposed