Saturday, 12 Oct, 2024
According to a report, the Indian nationals are tricked into travelling to Cambodia with the false hope of finding real, well-paying professions; but, after falling victim to human trafficking, their passports are seized, and they are made to labour for networks of cybercriminals. Image Source: IANS
Up until today, the Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh has effectively assisted over 650 Indian people who fell prey to these fraudulent schemes in being rescued and returned home.
The Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia said on Saturday that they are closely coordinating with the Cambodian authorities and have successfully rescued 14 Indian nationals from fraudulent job offers that forced them into cyber crime. The 14 Indians who were forced into cyber crime by the traffickers have requested the Indian Embassy to expedite the process of their return to India. The 14 men, most of them from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, were rescued by the local police in Cambodia and are presently staying in a NGO.
Up until today, the Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh has effectively assisted over 650 Indian people who fell prey to these fraudulent schemes in being rescued and returned home. In a statement released by the Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh, it said: "The Embassy of India in Phnom Penh has been actively rescuing Indian nationals from fraudulent job offers in Cambodia that lure them into cybercrime operations. In close cooperation with Cambodian authorities, the Embassy has facilitated the rescue and repatriation of over 650 Indian citizens who had fallen victim to these scams."
According to a report, the Indian nationals are tricked into travelling to Cambodia with the false hope of finding real, well-paying professions; but, after falling victim to human trafficking, their passports are seized, and they are made to labour for networks of cybercriminals. They used to have their passports confiscated upon arrival in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and were thereafter sent to work in call centres that engaged in "cyber scamming" with the intention of defrauding Indian individuals.
This enormous scam was discovered towards the end of the previous year after a senior central government official filed a complaint alleging that he had been cheated of over Rs 67 lakh. Eight persons were detained after the Rourkela Police in Odisha broke a cybercrime syndicate and were suspected of shipping people into Cambodia.
The Ministry of External Affairs has estimated that It is reported that more than 5,000 Indian nationals are detained against their will in Cambodia and coerced into perpetrating cyber crimes against Indians back home. According to government estimates, the fraudsters have allegedly duped people of at least Rs 500 crore in India over the past six months.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had held a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and other security experts in March this year to draw up a strategy to rescue the Indians trapped in Cambodia.
According to the sources, the agenda of their meeting was to discuss the organised racket and bring back those who are trapped there. The investigation by Central agencies has so far revealed that agents were trapping people, mostly those from the southern part of the country, and sending them to Cambodia under the guise of data entry work before coercing them into committing cybercrimes.
While having a word with The Indian Express, one of the rescued men, Stephen said, “We had to create fake social media accounts with photographs of women sourced from different platforms. But we were told to be careful while picking these photos. So a South Indian girl’s profile would be used to trap someone in the North so that it did not raise any suspicion. We had targets and if we didn’t meet those, they would not give us food or allow us into our rooms. Finally, after a month and a half, I contacted my family and they took the help of some local politicians to speak to the embassy.”
The Indian Embassy had released a warning earlier this year for those going to Cambodia for work. It requested that Indian nationals only obtain jobs through officially recognised agencies that have been approved by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The Embassy also suggested that a comprehensive background check be done of the prospective employer in Cambodia.
According to a 2023 study from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), cyber slavery in Southeast Asia may represent "one of the largest coordinated trafficking in persons operations in history." The sums that these con artists have extracted are incredible. Researchers at the University of Texas have released data indicating that, since January 2020, $75 billion in cryptocurrency has been transferred from fraud activities into exchange deposit accounts. In March, Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock stated that $2 trillion to $3 trillion of yearly unlawful global money flows are attributed to cyber slavery in the region.
