A fake investment scheme cracked in October 2023, involving a network of 84 bank accounts with transactions worth over ₹850 crore, and a work-from-home scam unearthed last week, involving a network of 30 bank accounts with transactions worth over ₹150 crore, were detected by following the trail of money laundered through several bank accounts.
“Opening these bank accounts is a point where the cyber and the real worlds meet, leading us to some of the accused,” a senior police official said.
But the biggest challenge to cybercrime investigations in the city has been the non-cooperation of banks and internet intermediaries, who hold information critical to unmasking cybercriminals and recovering the swindled money.
Police officials probing cyber frauds say many banks are lax in their response to queries seeking details on accounts, KYC details, and bank statements. “Delay in their response at the very least means any remote chance of recovering the swindled money is lost and at worst prevent us from cracking these rackets,” said an inspector of a Cyber Crime, Economic Offences and Narcotics (CEN) police station in the city.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner B. Dayananda has now started holding a monthly review meeting with the representatives of several banks and has evolved an internal mechanism for the quick sharing of this information. “Each bank has its protocols and many times the information we seek needs to be collected from their branches, adding to the delay. But the monthly meetings are now helping and slowly we are building trust and a bridge,” he said.
“Earlier, when Cybercrime Information Report (CIR), which seeks to freeze transactions within the golden hour after the cybercrime, was started two years ago, banks were lax in their response to even freezing accounts, which has improved now, but sharing of information is still a bottleneck,” an official said.
Internet intermediaries like VPNs harder nut to crack
The harder nut to crack has been the internet intermediaries whose cooperation is key to unmasking the identities of cybercriminals. For instance, the probe into the hoax bomb threat emails sent to over 70 schools in and around Bengaluru on December 1, 2023 has hit a dead end after the virtual private network (VPN) service provider was non-cooperative.
In most cyber rackets unearthed too, the police have only been able to arrest those in the lowest rung and have hit a wall in identifying the kingpins, hiding behind VPNs, and in some cases, based abroad. For instance, in the fake investment scheme and work-from-home scams unearthed recently, the kingpins are believed to be based out of the Gulf countries and are yet to be identified despite some leads.
“We need information from internet intermediaries to identify them and we are yet to find any luck with that. Meanwhile, our leads suggest they are abroad. Even if we identify them, there has not been a single case, to the best of our knowledge till date, where a person has been extradited from abroad to India in a cybercrime case,” the official said. For instance, in the case of hoax bomb threat emails sent to schools in the city in 2022, the IP address was finally traced to Pakistan and the information handed over to the Central agencies, never to be heard of again.
“Internet intermediaries work as per the norms of the countries they are headquartered at and not as per Indian rules. Most of the intermediaries share initial information as much as their norms allow them to, beyond which they ask us to take the Interpol route, which takes months to get processed and precious time is lost. While messaging apps and social media platforms are better in cooperating with us, it is the VPN service providers, whose USP is anonymity and privacy, which have made many probes hit dead ends,” explained a senior official involved with cybercrime investigations.
