The Central Bureau of Investigation has alleged in a first information report that thousands of Indians have been trafficked to Southeast Asian countries where they are forced to work as cyber criminals at “Chinese control scam centers,” reported The Indian Express on Sunday.
“Around 7,000 cyber-related complaints on an average are registered with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal daily and most of the frauds have origin in three Southeast Asian countries — Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos,” the newspaper quoted Rajesh Kumar, the chief executive officer of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, as saying.
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre operates under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
“We have found that many web applications used to commit the crimes are written in Mandarin, so we cannot rule out China connection,” Kumar added.
The victims were allegedly lured with the promise of lucrative jobs in Dubai and Bangkok and trafficked to Southeast Asia.
“They are forced to work as ‘cyber criminals’ under threat and duress in Chinese control scam centres,” the Central Bureau of Investigation claimed in its report.
The agency filed the case after several meetings with the home ministry, the telecom ministry and the Reserve Bank of India. The bank and ministries were asked to identify and plug the loopholes in the banking and telecom sectors that enable such scams.
The report gives the example of Saddam Sheikh, a resident of Maharashtra’s Palghar district.
“Saddam had received WhatsApp calls from two persons, working with a south Delhi-based manpower consultancy firm, informing him about a job in Thailand,” it says. “He visited their office and met the owner and also with an agent, who took Rs 1.4 lakh from him for procuring visa.”
On February 10, Sheikh was asked to reach Kolkata, from where he left for Bangkok.
At the Bangkok airport, another agent took money from him. Sheikh was then taken to Laos, where he met another agent hailing from Sikkim. “He was taken to Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, where he was introduced to other Chinese agents as well as Indian agents,” the agency said.
Sheikh was forced to dupe people in India, Canada and the United States by peddling fraudulent cryptocurrency investment opportunities online. He managed to escape the “scam centre” and reach Bangkok, from where he flew back to India on April 19.
The Telangana Cyber Security Bureau has also filed a similar first information report based on a complaint by a man named Martha Praveen, who fled such an operation in Cambodia, reported The Times of India on Saturday.
Praveen claimed that he was among 5,000 Indians working in a call-centre allegedly run by Chinese gangs.
Praveen had initially been offered a job in Azerbaijan but was later given a Cambodian visa and told that he would work there as a data entry operator. Once he reached, a taxi driver confiscated his passport and drove him to a large office complex where several call centres were being operated as “casinos”.
The operators were scamming people by offering them fraudulent trading, investment and job opportunities. They primarily targeted Indians, Europeans and Turkish nationals, reported the newspaper.
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!