Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency has released its first monthly performance report under Director General Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, and the numbers are striking. In a single month the agency received 5,176 citizen complaints, opened 4,491 formal inquiries, registered 272 criminal cases, arrested 1,129 suspects in nationwide operations, and recovered Rs105.3 million, all of it returned to the victims, the agency said on Sunday.
Decoding the complaint funnel
The raw figures tell a more interesting story than the headline. Roughly 87 percent of the complaints, 4,491 out of 5,176, were considered serious enough to become formal inquiries, which suggests the agency is filtering out only the weakest reports. The funnel then narrows sharply: just 272 of those inquiries turned into registered cases, about six percent. Spread across 272 cases, the 1,129 arrests average out to more than four suspects per case, a pattern that points to organised fraud rings rather than lone scammers. And while Rs105.3 million returned to victims is a genuine win, it is plainly a small fraction of what 5,176 complaints likely represent in total losses.
What the crackdown is actually catching
The agency’s own recent actions fill in the picture behind those numbers. Just a day before the report, the NCCIA’s Karachi reporting centre raided an illegal call centre and arrested 11 people, including the owner, identified as Yasir Gilgiti, along with agents, super agents and a floor manager. FIR 106/2026 was registered under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, as amended in 2025, read with the Pakistan Penal Code. The suspects allegedly impersonated US banks to steal social security numbers, card details, banking credentials and mobile numbers, then used them for unauthorised transactions. That pattern, fake call centres, financial identity theft and SIM-swap fraud, sits at the heart of what the one-month figures describe. It also links to the MNA biometric SIM fraud case reported this week, a reminder that even lawmakers are not immune.
How victims can actually report
The report carries a practical message too: complaints lead somewhere. Citizens can file a complaint through the NCCIA’s online portal at complaint.nccia.gov.pk, call the national helpline 1799 for guidance, email evidence to helpdesk@nccia.gov.pk, or visit the nearest Cybercrime Reporting Centre in person for cases involving major financial loss. One sensible first step before or after filing is to run a SIM owner details check to see how many SIMs are registered against your CNIC, since many fraud cases begin with a SIM the victim never authorised.
Why the numbers matter beyond the headline
DG Rizvi has promised a zero-tolerance policy against cybercrime and described digital protection as a national responsibility rather than just a policing task. The real test of this crackdown will not be arrest totals but convictions, and whether the amounts recovered grow as cases move through the courts. For now, the one-month report does something useful on its own: it puts an official number on the scale of Pakistan’s digital fraud problem. For more reporting on this beat, see our technology news and guides section and the latest Pakistan national news updates.
