Southeast Asian nations account for half of financial frauds in India: MHA

Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos have emerged as the major hotspots of cybercrimes, with around 48 per cent of financial frauds in India originating from these countries, according to The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C). 

I4C is a body established by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to provide a framework and eco-system for law-enforcement agencies for dealing with cybercrimes in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.

“We are seeing a spurt in organised cybercrime emanating from Southeast Asia. The volume of cybercrime, the number of victims and the amount of money lost has been increasing,” said Rajesh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, I4C

“We are finding that Indians are working from these scam compounds in Southeast Asia and are victimising their own countrymen back home. Some of them are innocently going as victims of cyber-enabled human trafficking, and some of them are doing it knowingly,” he said.

Speaking at a press conference, Kumar said that these scam compounds outside of India are offering cybercrime-as-a-service and money laundering too on a service model. 

A couple of days ago, a protest was reported in a suspected scam compound in Sihanouk city, Cambodia involving Indian nationals employed in the suspected scam compound, following which the India Embassy in Phnom Penh intervened and rescued 60 people.

The government has brought back around 420 Indian nationals back from such scam compounds till date, according to I4C data.

Digital arrest, trading scams, investment frauds, and dating scams were some categories across which most of the users were targeted, said I4C.

The advertisements for a lot of these frauds, including trading scams and investment frauds, are put up through Meta and Google platforms, and a lot of those originate from Hong Kong, said Kumar. 

Further, scammers were also using algorithmic manipulation in fake gaming apps to ensure that a user never wins and keeps getting scammed.  

Kumar also said that taking advantage of certain gaps in the KYC processes, a lot of money-mule bank accounts were being operated, where the prime proceeds are channelised through these accounts. 

Action taken

The National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) got more than one lakh cybercrime complaints registered in 2023, and around 10,000 FIRs were registered across the country in the same year.

To tackle the issue, a high-level inter-ministerial committee has been formed with the Special Secretary (Internal Security) as the chairperson. 

Acting against the frauds, I4C and state agencies together blocked a total of 3.25 lakh Mule Accounts in the last four months, and more than 3000 URLs and 595 apps under Section 69A of IT Act. 

Further, more than 1000 cyber criminals have been arrested from across India since December last year, said Kumar. 

The agency also revoked 5.3 lakh sim cards and 80848 IMEI numbers since July 2023, under section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act. 

The agency is also working with tech giants to come up with a technological intervention to stop the frauds.  

“We believe that when section 111 of the newly-enacted Bharatiya Jnana Samhita kicks in, which criminalises organised cybercrime with higher quantum of punishment, it will be helpful in stopping these organised cybercrimes,” said Kumar.