Smart, sophisticated and not very well learned: Meet new-age cyber criminals

One example that cyber cell officers cite is that of the 24-year-old suspect, Allimudin Ansari, of Deoghar in Jharkhand. Ansari was arrested by the cyber cell for duping multiple people, including Dr Vipul Aggarwal of Chandigarh, who had been cheated of Rs 40,000 in December 2019. Ansari, a school dropout, was arrested in February this year. He later confessed to having duped many people after having lured them with his ability to speak fluent English, which he said he used to his advantage as he introduced himself as a service provider of multiple national banks.

Another case, one in stark contrast to Ansari’s, is that of 29-year-old Nilutpal.

Nilutpal, an MSc (Computer Science) from Shillong University, was nabbed by the cyber cell for duping innocent women. Nilutpal’s slick modus operandi was getting in touch with his suspects on Instagram, and Facebook and introducing himself as a RAW agent, who was struck in a secret mission and needed money for his family. He urged his victims to deposit the money in the bank account of his mother, who was none other than his partner in the crime.

Likewise, Kunal Singh, 27, along with Mohammed Misbahu Haque, 21, are Class 8 pass outs. They were arrested by the cyber cell sleuths from Patna for cheating three Chandigarh-based men of Rs 10 lakh after making them download a mobile application, ‘Anydesk’ (through which they were able to control the mobile device of their victims), in February this year.

“We have come across many such people while investigating hundreds of cybercrime cases. Gone are the days when only technically skilled and educated people were found involved in such crimes. Today, education is not a criterion for cybercriminals. We have arrested many people from Jamtara in Jharkhand, Nuh in Haryana, and Tilak Nagar, Dwarka in Delhi, and found their educational qualifications to be minimal. One of the reasons why educated people have increasingly been lured to the world of cybercrimes is cause it is easy money. They do not have to do any hard work,” Cyber Crime Cell DSP, Rashmi Yadav Sharma, said.

Sources said, “Suspects like Kunal Singh and Misbahu Haque were arrested after the police followed the trail of their bank accounts in which Rs 10 lakh were transferred in many installments. Kunal and Haque reportedly disclosed that they were part of an organised gang and received 10 per cent of every transaction that was made in their bank accounts.”

Cyber faculty head at Central Detective Training School, Gurcharan Singh, said, “Cybercriminals are smarter than us. Technologies, and mobile applications, which are unknown to us, have been familiar to them for a long time. The Darkweb is one such example. As per my personal experience, we came to know about the Darkweb very late but the criminals were aware of it for a very long time.”