It is so surprising that the frequency with which cyber scams are coming to the fore, with the same surreptitious tech infra and modus operandi and yet it is not treated as a cyber crime emergency, then we are forced to take it as our misfortune. Either the powers that be are ignorant, or indifferent, but none of the two stances can be tolerated. If one tenth of the numbers impacted by cyber crimes were to be impacted by robbery or dacoity or even in case of housebreaking and theft, hell would have come down on the police. As in the case of white collar crime, very few are reported, the cyber crimes also generally go unreported.
If the situation we are in is at the stage of grave under reporting, it would be difficult to visualise the cybercrime rot we are in. The silver lining are the few cases that are being detected, mostly complex ones and having operations in more than a state. If a concerted effort is made at the national level certainly it would be much more effective. One of such cases has been cracked by the Rourkela Police, which busted apan-India share trading racket and arrested nine accused.
At the center of it was a fake app by name ‘Trade Now,’ the nine arrested were a part of this share trading racket, with a daily transaction value worth over Rs.50 lakhs. As a part of this operation the Rourkela police seized Rs.1.41 crore in 23 mule accounts. In two raids in Rourkela, 7 key operators were arrested. These 7, were the mule account operators of the racket. Will we never be able to develop ways and means to control the mule accounts? It seems either the bankers are involved or they are mute spectators for a price. Commercial bank managements are not ashamed of themselves, in allowing well known modes of swindling thrive right under their nose.
Subsequently, the kingpin of the racket, Kisan Agrawal and his brother Kunal were arrested from Raipur in Chattisgarh. Racket kingpin Kishan obtained a golden visa in February to avail resident status in Dubai for two years. This racket was being operated from Duabai in India and other countries. The proceeds of the crime were laundered through hawala channels. It constituted an organised crime racket across several south and west asian countries. It was found out that they were involved in 27 other cases across India. The seizures included five laptops, 31 mobile phones, 68 SIM cards, two Jio fibre Network routers, 20 ID documents, four passbooks and cheque books, two pen drives, 19 debit / ATM cards. No one knows the exact scale of operations either in individual cases or cumulatively.
WITH VISION, EXPERTISE AND EFFORT ALL LACKING, THE CYBER CRIMINALS ARE DETERMINED TO MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE ENFORCEMENT AND INVESTIGATIVE MECHANISM.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.