Police say there’s been a big rise in the number of frauds carried out this year compared with last year, and that elderly people are often targeted.
From January until the end of June police got more than 20,000 different reports of scams, an increase of 11% from the same time period the year before.
The main rise has been in more minor fraud attempts, but 1,600 more cases of internet fraud were reported as well.
“The ways of cheating have not changed, but their content and development becomes more difficult to identify” says Inspector Jyrki Aho from the National Police Board.
Authorities are concerned that scammers are often targeting people aged over 65, to commit frauds on the internet. There were 442 of these crimes reported last year, a 90% increase compared with the year before.
“In this target group, the impact of cybercrime is large. These crimes have increased by nearly two thousand crimes, which means an annual change of more than 26% during the first six months” of the year, explains Aho.
Police are warning people - especially the elderly - to beware of scammers trying to take advantage of them, but also saying there’s no need to be afraid of using the internet. There’s warnings too about so-called fishing scams involving fraudulent text messages, emails and callers approaching people on the phone.
Inspector Aho says that on their fraud statistics this year include scams connected to sales or online orders; fake romance scams, and corporate fraud as well.
