How online fraud in Hungary dropped by 30% in just six months – VIDEO

Online fraud cases have gone down by 30 percent in the past six months owing to new legal and police measures, an official said on Monday.

Bence Rétvári, state secretary of the interior ministry, noted that 18 months ago, police set up a 300-strong unit to fight cybercrime, and thanks to their investigations, 114 people out of 819 suspects have been arrested.

Banks are now obliged to bolster protections for their clients against fraudsters, while further measures will be introduced from August to make it easier to catch scammers.

In August last year, a man from Debrecen, who was on holiday in Balatonfüred, filed a complaint after a woman – posing as a bank employee – called him and told him that his account had been hacked and that several transfers had probably been made from there, police.hu said. She asked the victim to download the Anydesk application from a web interface, which he unfortunately did. This gave him access to his current account, and the perpetrators used his online bank account to damage him to the tune of more than five million forints. The money was transferred to several accounts and a significant part of it was withdrawn at a bank branch within a short period of time, but it was also exchanged for jewellery or currency.