Sharjah: As many as 19 cybercrime cases were recorded in Sharjah during the first quarter of this year, according to statistics released by Sharjah Police on Tuesday.
“There were 19 cases of electronic crime cases in 2015,” said Lieutenant Colonel Yousuf Obaid Harmol, Head of the organised crime section at Sharjah Police.
The most common cybercrimes are fraud involving money and blackmail or extortion.
He said these crimes are common because they are easy to commit from anywhere in the world.
“Most users of the World Wide Web don’t take security measures to protect their accounts, something that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation,” said Lt Col Harmol
He said that electronic fraud is one of the most difficult crimes to be dealt with by judicial officers due to the difficulty of identifying the crime scene and sometimes also difficult to seal the instruments of the crime, especially if the offender carried out his fraud from outside the UAE.
“But what matters is how we handle them. We work with international organisations to fight all kinds of internet crimes.” he said.
Sharjah Police recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of potential online dangers.
Lt Col Harmol said that cybercrime or fraud are punishable by federal law No 5 of 2012 on information technology crimes and specifically in article 11 thereof, which states that the suspect will be punished with imprisonment for not less than one year and/or a fine of not less than Dh250,000 and not more than one million dirhams.
