More than 100 cyber crime suspects arrested in Sharjah this year

SHARJAH // More than 100 cyber crime suspects were arrested in Sharjah in the first eight months of the year.

Sharjah Police said 122 people were held for involvement in 94 cases, the majority of which were financial or sexual blackmail, according to Col Ibrahim Al Ajel, director of Sharjah Criminal Investigation Department.

Other cases involved extortion, phone scams, corporate hacking, defamation and issuing insults.

In one case, a man posed as a woman on social media to chat with his victims and con them out of more than Dh100,000.

Sharjah Police registered 120 cyber crimes cases and arrested 117 suspects in the whole of last year.

“Some suspects hacked email accounts of corporates and emailed customers of the company of a change in bank account numbers and requested money to be transferred to the hacker’s account,” said Col Ajel.

He said these kinds of crimes were hard to trace, especially if the hacker was operating from outside the country.

“However, we were able to capture suspects in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior,” he said.

Col Al Ajel urged people to be vigilant when dealing with strangers online and said that people should never disclose personal information online.

“The majority of internet users don’t take proper security measures to protect their information and identity, which leads them open and vulnerable for cyber criminals,” he said.

Sharjah Police’s cyber crimes unit closed down a number of suspicious websites and arrested their owners in cooperation with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.

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