Probing a human trafficking, cheating and criminal conspiracy angle against cybercriminals from Southeast Asian countries, the CBI has alleged in its FIR that an international network is involved in trafficking of Indians to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, where they are forced into cybercrimes at “Chinese control scam centres”. Two months ago, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), found the China connection while probing cyber-related complaints. “Around 7,000 cyber-related complaints on an average are registered with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) daily and most of the frauds have origin in three Southeast Asian countries — Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. We have found that many web applications used to commit the crimes are written in Mandarin, so we cannot rule out China connection,” said Rajesh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, I4C. In its FIR, the CBI said, “It has been learnt from reliable sources that an international network of human traffickers is involved in trafficking of Indian nationals to Southeast Asian Countries, particularly to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. First, the victims are offered lucrative job offers in Thailand, Dubai and Bangkok. When the victims reach the pre-destined countries, they are further trafficked/transported to Southeast Asian countries where they are forced to work as 'cyber criminals' under threat and duress in Chinese control scam centres.” The FIR was lodged after multiple rounds of meetings were held by the MHA with the Telecom Ministry, Reserve Bank of India and CBI, asking them to identify and plug loopholes in banking and telecom sectors that enable such scams. As first reported by The Indian Express on March 28, over 5,000 Indians are suspected of being stuck in Cambodia and forced to carry out “cyberfrauds”. The CBI mentioned in its FIR about a case study of one of the victims, Saddam Sheikh, a resident of Maharashtra’s Palghar. “Saddam had received WhatsApp calls from two persons, working with a south Delhi-based manpower consultancy firm, informing him about a job in Thailand. He visited their office and met the owner and also with an agent, who took Rs 1.4 lakh from him for procuring visa ,” the FIR states. “…After arrangements of air tickets and visa, Saddam was asked to reach the Kolkata airport to get all his documents and he left for Bangkok on February 10. At Bangkok airport, he met another agent who took money from him and took him to Chiang Rai immigration from where he was taken to Laos, where he met another agent, who is a native of Sikkim and he was taken to Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone where he was introduced to other Chinese agents as well as Indian agents,” the CBI said in its FIR. Saddam was forced to work on social media profiles to cheat people in India, Canada and the US through cryptocurrency investment schemes. He managed to escape from the scam centre and reached Bangkok, from where he came back to India on April 19.
