Female foreign national arrested in Islamabad on cybercrime charges

ISLAMABAD: Cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Tuesday claimed to have arrested a female foreign national and his accomplice over depriving citizens of Rs 5.2 million, ARY NEWS reported.

According to the FIA, the woman, a citizen of Nigeria, was involved in depriving people of Rs 5.2 million during various cybercrime activities.

She used bank accounts of her accomplices to transfer money looted from the citizens, the agency said adding that a case has been registered against the accused under cybercrime laws.

It is pertinent to mention here that Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on February 20, said that it had received over 56,000 complaints relating to cyber crime during 2019 and registered 1086 cases against the accused.

The details were shared by the FIA officials during the meeting of the National Assembly’s standing Committee on Defense, chaired by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) MNA Amjad Nizai.

The officials said that out of the 56,696 complaints received by the agency, 11028 were investigated and 1086 cases were registered against the accused involved in cyber crime activities.

“We have raised the number of the anti-cyber crime offices to 15 to improve action against such acts,” they said adding that currently there are over 70 million internet users in the country.

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They said that a majority of the cyber crime cases reported to them were related to sexual harassment, blackmailing and obscene activities online.

“We have also held a child pornography gang operating globally and one of the Pakistani accused is convicted in the case,” they said.

The FIA officials said that they had also busted a gang-comprising of PTA officials-  involved in activating IMEI numbers without tax payment. “An investigation in the case is ongoing,” they said.