Beware! Net scamsters on the prowl in India

Priya Srinivasan in Mumbai

If you thought focussed targeting on the Internet went just about as far as flooding your mail box with advertisements for undergarments or aphrodisiacs every time you (even accidentally) looked up a porn site, get this. A businessman running a mid-sized enterprise in the chemical business recently received an e-mail from a gentleman in the US, asking the businessman for his bank details. The mail in gist suggested that the sender would like to transfer upto $20 million (under some pretext of business) to the Indian businessman’s bank account. “When I come to India next, I will collect the money from you and you get to keep 30 per cent of it,” the mail goes on to suggest. Welcome to the world of online money laundering.

Not convinced that cyber crime is now real crime? Consider another, very real, instance. A Mumbai-based project consultant who is currently trying to raise money for a couple of his media clients, came across a Website which offered the contact details of one Lebanese national who had investors keen on making investments in this part of the world. The Mumbai-based project consultant mailed the gentleman and received a prompt response.

The response in a nutshell—of course the gentleman would be interested in studying the proposals, but he would need to come down to India for this and could the company sponsor his trip? The potential investee company sent the Labanese an open ticket. The investor arrived in Mumbai, wined and dined (had to be carried upto his room in drunken stupor according to the consultant) and his parting words were that he was impressed with the company, saw investment potential and requested certain guarantees. That is the last the project consultant and his client heard of the gentleman from Lebanon!

“Its obvious this sort of thing will now be on the rise since Internet usage itself is on the rise,” said Mr Manoj Lohia, DCP, economic offences wing, Mumbai Police. “We anticipate many more such cases in future, especially given the rise in systems like tele-banking,” he adds.

“Increasingly I am hearing of similar cases from Delhi and Chandigarh as well,” said well known Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal. “It is the manifestation of Internet scams and it is undoubtedly on the rise and the targets are typically in developing countries where the Internet experience is only just catching on.

Duggal cites another case in Chandigarh, where a salaried employee came across a proposal to stack up Rs 150 crore on behalf of an Amsterdam national, in a chat room. The gentleman from Chandigarh was asked to mail Rs 8 lakh as a guarantee towards this deal, something which he was only too willing to do. “The logic here is clearly that for an up front investment of Rs 8 lakh, I get a hefty commission that could run into crores, it sounded like the perfect get rich quick scheme to this gentleman,” said Mr Duggal.

When the gentleman in Chandigarh tried to verify the credentials of the sender through someone in Amsterdam, the address and phone numbers were found to be fictitious.

While it would be naive to profess a solution or even a safeguard for crime perpetuated online at this juncture, what sort of prevention and redressal mechanism can realistically be instituted? “In a few weeks the International Cybercrime Treaty comes up for ratification by the Council of Ministers of the EU. The signatories will be able to initiate action against cyber criminals,” said Mr Duggal.

In the meantime, of course, there is no safeguard like good old prudence, if you receive a mail promising you a million dollars, prudence demands that you hit that delete button.