Mumbai: Before the numbers started to ring, the callers were warned of e-fraudsters who lured people to part with their money in a variety of ways. Some six thousand frauds were carried out each day. The voice on the phone promised doubling of money and multiplying it in the stock markets. They even impersonated police officials and judges. Still, the frauds have been increasing exponentially.
The entrapment is not by mere stealing of data and passwords, and remote installation of malware, and persuading to reveal of OTPs to access bank accounts. The criminals were also impersonating as law enforcers – local police, ED personnel, CBI et al. Some of the persons cheated included judges in recreated police stations and courtrooms, and threatening to put them under “digital custody.”. This is an elaborate theatre; people called were put in dread of jail.
The total money lost to the fraudsters is mindblowing. Recently, the parliament was told that the public was cheated out of a massive Rs 22,846 crore in 2024 which was higher by 42 per cent over the previous year’s Rs 7465 cr. This is exponential growth because in 2022, the sum lost was only Rs 4,50,000. This indicates that the business of cheating is truly on an industrial scale. To know how one has only to watch the episodes in Hindi on OTT platforms of Jamtara.
To their credit, the authorities have not been sitting on their haunches. They have helped recover Rs 5489 cr. It is but a small slice of the astronomical sums lost to fraudsters. India has 350 million UPI accounts transacting some Rs 2 lakh crore per year, and penetrating them is the purpose to steal from their accounts. Some 1.78 million complaints were received last year. It is easy to lose by clicking on a fraudulent link received on an SMS but to wade through nearly 2 million cases and trawl back the lost money is tough.
A million SIM cards likely used for frauds have been blocked, the Hindustan Times reported, and 2.4 million ‘mule accounts’ identified. A mule account is a borrowed bank account by paying to use someone else’s to park proceeds of the frauds. Over a million profiles of suspects have been prepared. To prevent people from unsuspectingly falling prey, telecom service providers now warn you if the incoming call is a spam call. “Likely fraud” also flashes on your mobile phone’s screen, thanks to AI.
What is intriguing is the way people get tricked into getting into ‘digital detentions’ of ‘digital custody’ from which they cannot seem to escape. Of course, the call on the WhatsApp is the start of the mind game played by clever cheaters who use psychological means and pressure the victim to transfer funds from their accounts to mule accounts. They even isolate the victims from the families and friends till they agree to go to the bank, break the FDs and transfer the money to the criminals.
That, like I said before, is a mind game but that is only a part. There are men in uniform, the set is a police station, impressive designations are flaunted, constables flit around in the police station, suddenly a judge turns up to deal with the urgent case, and the pressure is piled on. The victim is told of suspicious entries in their bank accounts, which point to money laundering. Or the victim is told of parcels containing drugs held back by courier companies which is why the police came on the scene via WhatsApp.
This is where the gullibility of the victims surface, even if the victims are savvy businessmen, retired professors, bankers. The targets seem to be retired and elderly who were, due to age, already losing their wits to cope with the sudden intrusion of the ‘law’. Do they believe that in the Indian system, especially criminal jurisprudence where suspects languish in jails without a hearing for months and years? Perhaps they are conditioned by the widely prevalent bribe for doing their duty?
They have read of bribes for everything, even for registering an FIR or a non-cognizable (NC), or release of property upon solving a case. They have seen the constable refusing to compound a traffic violation but readily agreeing to get his palm greased. They have seen that influence or grease money moves things. At the mention of grave offences reeled off by macho officials sucks them into hope of a release, even if the crime itself was a fiction. They want to end their future misery.
I know of a close relative getting a phone call conveying that the caller had ‘mistakenly deposited Rs 50,000’ in his bank account. Would he mind returning the sum or sharing his bank details? The savvy recipient asked the caller to wait, checked for the bank’s alerts, and quietly informed the caller that no such sum had been credited. Quickly, it turned into a video call. A police officer entered the screen and tried taking the story forward. The relative disconnected the call. Not all are as savvy. Most are suckers.
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