Ravinder Malhotra, 55, a Gurgaon-based government employee working in Delhi, got an SMS last November, saying he had an electricity bill of ₹12 due to be paid. His son Ayush, 22, told The Hindu that even though he’s the one that usually pays the power bills from Pune, Mr. Malhotra decided to pay the amount. On the landing page linked in the SMS, there was a phone number for guidance.
“He called them and they asked him to download an app,” Ayush said.
The SMS was from a scammer, and the app allowed them to remotely control Mr. Malhotra’s phone. As the ₹12 transaction kept supposedly failing, Mr. Malhotra received other one-time passwords (OTPs) from his bank, all of which the scammer was able to see.
Within minutes, he had lost ₹3,28,000 from two bank accounts.
Even as police in Delhi and Haryana disagreed on the jurisdiction, Ayush said, the payment gateway used by the scammer froze a large part of the money that was siphoned out of Mr. Malhotra’s account after he made a call to 1930. While one bank was able to reverse the funds, the other was not; however, Mr. Malhotra was able to recover over half of what the scammer had stolen.
Integrated helpline
Mr. Malhotra is among 1.33 lakh people across the country who were able to get stolen money back after reporting the fraud on the toll-free helpline number 1930.
The helpline, that was launched in 2021 by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to help victims of financial fraud is integrated with State police control rooms.
The extent of the financial fraud can be gauged from the fact that during 2021 when the helpline was launched, ₹51 crore was blocked by banks on the request of police and agencies across the country, but the total amount saved since the launch of the helpline has risen to ₹306 crore.
Faster recovery
In Assam, for example, over 10,000 complaints were received on 1930 over the past 21 months, involving fraudulent transactions worth ₹41 crore. “In around 2,800 cases, we were able to freeze ₹7.1 crore of the money cheated from people, one of the highest recovery rates among other States,” G.P Singh, Director General of Police, Assam, told The Hindu.
If the affected person makes a call within the golden hour (that can range from immediately to 24 hours), the possibility of getting back their money increases. Home Minister Amit Shah said on March 28 that 250 financial institutions and wallets have been linked to 1930, and that makes the recovery of money faster. It usually takes up to ten days for the money to be returned to victims’ accounts.
‘Even ₹25 fraud important’
Mr. Shah said that the helpline should be popularised to stop cyber frauds in the country.
“Some frauds are of very low value, people do not want to register FIRs. We cannot force them. Some complaints cannot be converted to FIRs. But this helps in curbing such crimes because the modus operandi is analysed, the loopholes that were exploited to commit the crime are further plugged. Even a fraud involving ₹25 is important to us,” the Minister said.
If prompted in time, law enforcement agencies can freeze the SIM card and the bank account involved in the crime, and provisions are also being made to freeze mobile handsets, Mr. Shah said.
The Home Minister made these remarks while briefing a group of journalists after he reviewed the working of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) at Jai Singh Road in Delhi. The Centre, started in 2020, has seven verticals: a cyber-crime reporting portal, analysis of threats, capacity building, research and innovation, creating an ecosystem for cyber-crime management and a joint cyber-crime investigation platform for law enforcement agencies.
One stop solution
One of the key components of I4C is the 1930 helpline and the portal — cybercrime.gov.in — where people irrespective of jurisdiction can register complaints. While 1930 is specifically meant for financial frauds, the portal can be used to register cases of sexual harassment and crimes against children too. Since its launch in January 2020, more than 20 lakh cyber-crime complaints have been registered on the portal, out of which 40,000 complaints were converted to First Information Report (FIRs). So far, 13 crore people have used the portal.
The Home Minister said that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) analyses crime trends on social media by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and that I4C assists them.
Awareness efforts
“The I4C officials are regularly in touch with State police officials, but even they should popularise it by sending the message to all the police stations. Earlier the helpline was a six-digit number, 1930 was only launched last year. It is gradually getting popular,” a senior Home Ministry official said. The I4C teams will also be sent to States to train and publicise the helpline.
“Our system immediately sends alert after receiving a complaint. There were some issues with banks, like they were not operating 24/7, those issues are being resolved and there is an improvement,” the official said.
The Ministry aims to make the I4C a one-stop solution for everything related to cybercrimes. While ₹25 crore was allotted in the 2022-23 budget for the Centre, that has shot up to ₹94 crore for 2023-24.
Cheating methods
Vidushi Kaushik, assistant commissioner of police, Karol Bagh, Delhi said that the daughter of an acquaintance of hers recently became a victim of one such fraud, but 1930 came to her rescue.
“The acquaintance is currently overseas. His daughter received a call from a fraudster who identified himself as an official from the Customs department. He told her that her father had sent a parcel and she will need to pay the customs duty the same day, else her father could be prosecuted. She was given an account number to which she transferred money by way of two cheques. The transaction was subsequently reported on 1930 helpline. About ₹10 lakh of the ₹21 lakh has been returned,” Ms. Kaushik said.
In 2021, the cyber cell wing of Delhi Police received 1,15,013 calls, out of which 24,219 were related to financial fraud, and the police were able to freeze ₹4.31 crore of the cheated amount.
Teething problems
Despite the government’s push, there are still teething problems. An official said that sometimes banks are not available on weekends and public holidays and the cheated money jumps to various accounts.
“The people involved in such scams have multiple bank accounts. After cheating a person, they transfer the amount to other accounts. Talks are on with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to automate the tickets, presently it is done manually,” said the official. NPCI is an umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in India.
User complaints
However, on the Twitter page of @cyberdost, the official page of the crime portal, several users complained that the 1930 helpline does not connect or no action is taken after a complaint is lodged. On Sunday, a user Arvind Khandelwal who lost ₹50,000 on March 17 wrote, “despite complaining within an hour of the fraud, the money has not been restored.”
Another official said that sometimes, the account of a shop or a restaurant where the defrauded money has been sent is also frozen. “If a fraudster uses the bank account in which he received the money to make payment at a mall or a store, then the account of that store is also blocked in the process. We are working on how to solve the issue,” the official said.
Help via 1930
One fraud victim that The Hindu spoke to was selling a fridge on the OLX site in May 2022, when he got a call from a buyer who was willing to pay ₹5,000 immediately. “I asked them to come talk to me, but they said they’d pay first,” the victim said. The ‘buyer’ sent a link and provided some instructions, but money moved to the scammer’s account instead. The scammer insisted that there had been a mistake, and asked the victim to try again, this time for double the amount, to reverse the previous transaction and actually pay for the fridge.
“And the money went [again] from my account to theirs,” the victim said. “Then the money kept going up from transaction to transaction. They kept sending more links. Then I figured out it was a fraud.”
By the time he caught on to the scheme, he had lost ₹65,000. The victim then went to a police station that registered a complaint, and called the 1930 helpline at the same time. The money was credited back into his account five days later.
Published - April 02, 2023 06:24 pm IST