India Emerging As Global Hotbed Of Digital Fiscal Fraud ?

 BY R.K.MISRA

 Data turns dormant desire into informed insights.

If Jharkhand’s poverty riddled backyard, Jamtara, gained notoriety as the cybercrime capital of the country , it is now the turn of Haryana’s Mewat to emerge as  digital India’s underbelly.

This came to the fore with a recent revelation that Haryana Police’s cybercrime cell had blocked almost five lakh SIM cards  over the year that were in use in the state’s Mewat region to commit  cyber frauds countrywide. Published reports point out that the SIM cards were operational in 40 villages, had led to identification of over 400 alleged cyber-criminals, acting on 66,784 complaints made between January-December 2022 that had led to a loss of Rs 301.48 crores and does not include the Rs 47 crore in fraudulent transactions that were thwarted through use of Artificial Intelligence and advanced cyber-identification tools. Also that it had managed to identify about  5 lakh mobile numbers issued from other states but put to use exclusively in this region.

The statistics are re-assuring in the strides by the cops in using emerging technologies to combat cyber-crime but stunning in the breadth of the fraudsters reach, spread and financial figures skimmed in this digital fiscal fraud.

Is India fast gaining notoriety as the global hotbed of financial fiscal fraud through con-calls ? There are reasons to believe so because illegal con-call centres have been mushrooming all over the country with their proceeds fuelling a wholly illegal, black money economy of  humongous proportions and global connections, all working in tandem.

According to the  eighth edition of  the Truecaller Insights 2022, US Spam and Scam Report dated May 24,2022, a staggering $ 39.5 billion was lost to phone scams in America over the past 12 months and marked an increase of 14.9 per cent over the same period last year. To put things into perspective ,the total money lost to con-call scams is comparable to American Rescue Plan Act’s entire childcare budget of $39 billion. In other words if  this fraud is eliminated, the amount saved  could fund federally subsidized child care across US for one full year.

Importantly, published Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) data shows that 20,000 US citizens lost more than $ 10 billion to con-call fraudsters operating from India in 2022. In 2021 the amount was $6.9 billion  thus indicating a 47 per cent increase. Romance related frauds led to a loss of  Rs 8000 crore to victims in 2021 and another Rs 8000 crores in just 11 months of 2022,FBI website reported.

 It was this rise in  frauds originating from India that led to the FBI deputing a permanent representative at the US Embassy in Delhi to coordinate  with Indian investigation agencies as well as  Interpol.

The Global Anti-scam Alliance(GASA)puts the  global loss to consumers from scammers last year at nearly $50 billion and an increase of 90 per cent in reported cases to 266 million reports. However this constitutes only the tip of the iceberg since only 7 per cent of all victims report the online scam to the police. Despite this, in most developed countries 20 to 40 per cent of all reported crime is now related to online fraud. Scammers, however can go free because they can operate globally while law enforcement operations locally, regionally or nationally. According to the World Economic Forum only 0.05  of all cyber criminals are prosecuted.

India  figures fourth from the top in the 20 countries  affected by spam calls in 2021 with Brazil leading the pack, followed by Peru and Ukraine with Mexico, Chile and Indonesia following after us.

 It is unbelievable yet true  that over 202 million calls were made by just one spammer in 2021.That would be 6,64,000 calls per day and 27,000 calls  every hour every day. That telecom operators allowed this volume and such going-on s failed to raise the heckles of the  country’s watchdog agencies is a sad reflection on the prevailing state of affairs.

An analysis of call centre crimes in Gujarat by Akanksha Kakhse and Dr Pavitran Nambiar of the Gujarat Forensic Science University(GFSU) points to the use of advanced communication technologies wherein calls to US citizens are mimicked as coming from the Internal Revenue Service of the US government .In fact these emanate from fraudulent facilities clandestinely operating from various parts of India and are used to extort money. “The  police in the states remain completely unaware about such incidents du to lack of knowledge and inadequacy of sophisticated instruments. When they were alerted, they had to hire specialists from outside their department due to lack of experts in this field”, the paper notes.

In the two cases under study in Ahmedabad and busted by the cops, the call centres  employed  between 70 to a 100 persons and the second one even had branches in Maharashtra. Permissions for running a call centre were in place, only that instead of legal work fraudulent activities of extortion  through con-calls were taking place and there were accomplices of Indian origin  operating out of the US, 20 of them were arrested.

They key observations emerging out of the study is that these con-call set-ups were invariably owned by  persons with experience  of working in genuine call centres where they had picked up the tricks of the trade and its  managerial nuances before going into con call operations in search of filthy lucre. There is need for a special set-up within the state police for dealing with such crimes in times  when these are proliferating  by leaps and bounds. Moreover specialized  manpower needs to be inducted  and constantly upgraded in skillsets to keep pace with the fiscal fraudster who has great financial heft, international linkages and access to the latest technology.

Besides, the country’s enforcement agencies would do well to focus on the rising  financial muscle of cyber crime-syndicates and their global tie-ups which pose real and inherent danger to the Indian Union rather than pursue the  peanut-sized for the political objectives of the powers that be !

http://odishapostepaper.com/edition/4405/orissapost/page/9

http://epaper.lokmat.com/articlepage.php?articleid=LOKTIME_NPLT_20230221_6_1