Clickbait to Courtroom: Media, Law and Fraud Epidemic

“Congratulations! You’ve won 23,343 taka. Click here to claim" – none of us living in this era should be unfamiliar with these kinds of offers via message. What becomes the consequences? A simple click and victimised with an account drained or might be any sort of online harassment.

From fake job posts to share links, both the highly educated and normal people end up falling prey to online scams, like scams related to mobile banking, fake job offers, frauds while online shopping, lottery prize offers, and easy loan-paying services of this civilisation.

Stepping into the century of hyper-connectivity, this civilisation is swinging between innovative ideas and facing immense digital insecurity – it seeks a check and balance of the damaged media responsibility and enforcement of laws.

The rapid growing digital economy of Bangladesh motivates citizens in being dependent on online money transfer, social sites e-commerce for purchase-sale and multi-tasking purpose. The paradox of the digital economy and online dependency leads to tracing the history of fraudsters. According to the home minister, Bangladesh lost 21,000 crore Tk between the years 2006 and 2021, and the horrible phenomenon is that it has never decreased; rather, morphing is going on alarmingly at times.

In the epoch of the 2000s, pyramid and MLM scams through the associations Jubok and Destiny gave us the reality check of cyber scams. The 2010s gave the real concept of e-commerce scams, where those dubious online business platforms offered unthinkable discounts and ended up delivering no product or, in some cases, partial goods in return. That was the first wake-up call for weak consumer protection by means of online business platforms.

The Bangladesh Bank Cyber Heist, 2016, triggered the whole country at once as the hackers manipulated the SWIFT system using random malware to send 35 fraudulent transfer requests. Through this procedure they victoriously stole 81 million dollars from the account of Bangladesh Bank at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Impersonating themselves as service agents from renowned money transfer companies, the fraudsters started tricking users by means of sharing PINs and OTPs in the beginning of the 2020s, together with an exponential expansion of phishing links, fake prize and job offer links over Facebook and WhatsApp.

Research of 2024 found out that cybercrime prevalence doubled to 11.85% in one year, with 21.65% of cases involving social media platforms. Fraudulent cloud services like MTFE operated bold expression – metaverse and crypto – in order to attract investors, paving the way for recent trends for cyber scams. Legal agencies evaluate approximately 400+ Ponzi CEOs who ran across Bangladesh and looted millions.

The statistics of victims are more terrifying than the background of cyber fraud. The young adults of 18-30 years are the worst sufferers at 78.78%, along with 59% of women victims; even the children under 18 years got a place in this chat, having 13.65%. This brings the ultimate result of 40.15% financial loss against 47.72% social harm with mental breakdown of the victims. The danger zone seeks legal enforcement.

Legal Enforcement: The Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006, was the very first enactment for tracking online hacking and fraud. The Digital Security Act, 2018, and the Cyber Security Ordinance, 2025, try to restrain the subtle legal loopholes. The Penal Code, 1860, deals with reputational and financial harm caused via online media.

Unlike every social epidemic, cybercrime also deserves public and individual awareness. Though cybercrime has already been brought under legal enactment, reportedly only 12% of the victims sought legal help, which brings comparatively a small-scale benefit. Having no territorial boundary and corresponding with the advancement of technology, cyber-related crimes grasp not only rather the whole world but also its aghast roar.

Social media hacking, dark web videos, and pornography sites are leading to social and emotional distress for the affected, mostly the women victims. Money scams bring individual financial loss, escorting economic collapse for a country. Having lack of knowledge about digital fraud, enactment incapacity and social stigma results in losing interest of people, especially the women victims, to file reports against cybercrime.

To the victims, all the people, including the women, need to become conscious of their own rights and become serious about the real meaning of harassment. They should not care for some so-called superstitions and stigmas while taking a stand against the wrongs that are continuously happening to them and getting victimised.