Cyber fraud proceeds at ₹34K-cr: ED

THe Enforcement board of directors has identified proceeds of criminal offense charles frederick worth ₹34,855 crore generated by cybercriminals through and through activities including illegal online gaming, cryptocurrency scams, predatory instant loan apps, investment frauds, and impersonation scams, of which ₹12,229 crore has been attached till date, an ED officer aware of details said.The agency has found that majority of the proceeds in its 234 cybercrime-related prevention of money laundering act (PMLA) cases is laundered through mule accounts, shell companies cryptocurrencies, and hawala operators, the officer said, requesting anonymity.ED shared the details during a presentation at the first national conference on ‘Tackling cyber-enabled frauds and dismantling the ecosystem’, organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) in Delhi last week. More than 500 investigators from across the country had taken part in the conference.“Out of a little over ₹1.70 lakh crore proceeds of crime attached by us till date, ₹34,855 crore is linked to 234 cybercrimes cases we have investigated under PMLA. We have already attached ₹12,229 crore out of this amount but the scale of these crimes is very big,” the ED officer said. “Organised groups or individuals generate proceeds of crime (PoC) through Ponzi schemes, bogus forex trading/stock trading applications, illegal betting, gambling, and gaming platforms, instant loan apps, digital arrests, impersonation frauds etc. The scammers then incorporate hundreds of shell companies specifically for acquiring and siphoning off the money. The money is then collected in multiple mule accounts of shell companies by mis-declaring their merchant categories with various payment gateways/aggregators.”The siphoning off, the officer said, involves “availing services of hawala operators who remit the PoC by various means such as conversion into crypto currency, sending bogus foreign outward remittances against fake import of goods, services, airway bills, royalty payments, freight charges etc., remitting through the use of various available payment gateways or payment aggregators etc”.ED said at the conference that it has identified over 1,000 mule accounts used in cybercrimes. The agency has found that the masterminds operate their networks remotely and also control the movement of proceeds of crime through mule accounts, cryptocurrencies, etc.Some of the major cases in cybercrime category being investigated by ED include ₹6,000-crore Mahadev online book app run by fugitives Souabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, ₹5,000-crore OctaFX online investment fraud run by a Russian national Pavel Prozorov, 1XBet online betting scam in which several cricketers and celebrities have been questioned, and Birfa-IT case involving foreign remittances worth over ₹4,000 crore.Union home minister Amit Shah said at the conference on February 10 that timely prevention of cyberfraud is the most powerful weapon that requires collective awareness, coordination, and firm resolve from all stakeholders.The minister emphasised that the government’s goal is to bring together all relevant stakeholders, including CBI, National Investigation Agency (NIA), Reserve Bank of India, state police forces, other investigating agencies, and government departments, to create a coordinated and highly secure ecosystem. “Such coordination is essential to effectively combat cybercrime and to make India’s digital ecosystem safe and trustworthy,” he said.