Phone call that can mop up your money

Earlier this year, Shridhar Naik, a college professor in Mumbai, received a text message saying that the documents submitted to his cellular service provider were incomplete. He called the number mentioned in the SMS and the person on the other end, who turned out to be a fraudster, tricked Naik into installing a screen-sharing app and granting him access. Using this access, the fraudster captured Naik’s netbanking credentials and cleaned out his account. Complaints were immediately registered but that was the last he saw of his hard-earned money.

Then again, Dr Christina George, a professor at the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana was all set to go on holiday in October last year when she received a call supposedly from her bank. The caller seemed to know exactly what tickets she had bought and for how much and told her they would be giving her reward points for the transaction. She was too clever to share the OTP she had received but even so within minutes she received SMS messages informing her she had spent nearly a lakh of rupees on various transactions.

Police investigation revealed the fraudster had used a wallet application to transfer her money as her phone inadvertently was using an unsecured website.

Cyber crimes have thus moved from simple cheating and innocent sharing of OTPs to more sophisticated systems of frauds that even the highly educated and aware people become victim to. A well-organised system set up by cyber fraudsters prevents the police from apprehending them despite the number of cases piling up every year. Running entirely on cash, this system sets off silent alarms every time a police team reaches remote villages where the fraudsters are based, investigators have observed.

According to recent statistics released by the Mumbai Police, 2883 cases of cybercrimes were registered in 2021, and only 16 percent of these were detected. Although the detection rate has improved as compared to 2020, when it stood at nine percent, it is still low and a cause for concern, officers said.

According to officials with the Mumbai Cyber department, a majority of these crimes are cases where fraudsters call up their victims posing as officials from their banks or cellular service providers. These fraudsters, using a variety of methods, win their victims’ trust and gain access to their bank accounts, which are then cleaned out of every naya paisa before the hapless victim realises what has happened.

“The single most challenging part in detecting such crimes is that the perpetrators are based in small villages in states like Uttar Pradesh or Rajasthan, and have established an entire network of people there to help them evade arrest. This includes the ‘sarpanch’ or the ‘mukhiya’, who are on their payroll and do everything to shield them from the authorities,” an officer who has been part of several investigations said.

The officer added that this system works perfectly for the accused, as for any operation beyond the home state’s borders, they are required to enlist the local police’s aid, and the first people that the local police turn to are the sarpanch or the mukhiya, as they know their villages the best.

“Over repeated trips to these villages for detection of multiple cases, we have even found information to indicate that the accused, who are, for obvious reasons, the richest in their villages, pour money by the lakhs into supporting candidates of their choice in the local elections. Once the candidate wins, the accused get his undying loyalty,” the officer said.

Apart from the local administration, the perpetrators of online frauds have also set up a vast network of local residents from their villages, mostly teenagers looking to make extra money. “The fraudsters earn lakhs of rupees on a daily basis, and are able to afford a small army of lookouts. These young men are tasked with keeping their eye out for policemen from other cities, who are quite easy to spot, and calling up the fraudsters immediately, so that they can escape. There was one case where we knew for sure that a wanted accused was inside a house that was locked from outside. However, half the village population stood in our way saying that the house was empty and we had no right to force our way in,” the officer said.

Over the years, the fraudsters have perfected not only their escape plans, but also their modus operandi. Senior citizens have now become their targets of choice, as they are gullible and not very tech savvy. Even educated people fall prey to their well thought out tricks.

“We also know of instances where people don’t bother to register complaints for small amounts. What they don’t realise is that they are just one of the hundreds of victims targeted by the accused every month, and that the accused are making crores of rupees in this manner,” a Cyber police officer said.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)