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In 2021, India had among the most recorded cybercrimes in the world, after the US, Britain and Canada, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report of 2021. Photo: Shutterstock

As India goes digital, unsuspecting victims lose life savings to social media scams

  • Cybercrimes are not new to India but a new wave of such crimes is spreading, in which victims are promised money for liking social media content
  • Scammers are also using social media platforms to convince victims of their legitimacy and such crimes are often difficult to detect, say experts
India
Ankita Pandey, 28, had been on a maternity break for over 18 months, and was itching to get back to work. Her career had suffered after her company shut just after the pandemic began.

For weeks, Pandey sent in applications and uploaded her resume to online job portals, but had little luck. When she finally received a message in March, it felt like her prayers had been answered.

It was a work-from-home opportunity, just like she wanted. All she had to do was invest money and get close to 30 per cent returns on it after completing some “tasks” on social media.

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Pandey received 2,800 rupees (US$34) within minutes of finishing her first such task – to follow accounts and like some posts on Instagram. A few more likes later, Pandey had invested 10,000 rupees and earned 15,000 rupees.

Buoyed, Pandey kept pouring in money, waiting for higher returns.

In the next 24 hours, she sent in 90,000 rupees, until she had nothing left in her account. But her manager continued asking for more money if she wanted to get her cash back.

That was when she realised that she had been conned of all her savings.

She isn’t alone.

While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country. Photo: AP
While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country – where unsuspecting victims like Pandey, promised money for liking Instagram posts and YouTube videos, are being conned of millions of rupees.

These crimes are pushing many deep into debt, and often, despair. Late last month, a software engineer in the southern city of Hyderabad took his own life after losing more than 1.2 million rupees in a similar scheme, just months after he got married.

According to India’s national cybersecurity coordinator Rajesh Pant, the government’s portal for reporting such crimes receives over 3,500 new complaints every day. Independent experts believe the true number is significantly higher.

Emails to Rajesh Kumar, CEO of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, were not answered. Sanjay Shintre, the nodal officer in charge of fighting cybercrime in Maharashtra, also did not respond to media queries.

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Heavy cost for Modi’s digital push

After taking power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a Digital India campaign to “transform India into a digitally empowered society”, with officials aggressively pushing the use of digital payments instead of cash.

But this priority has come at a cost. In 2014, India reported more than 9,600 cybercrimes. The number has continued to skyrocket: between January 2020 and December 2022, more than 1.6 million such crimes were recorded, according to data released by Indian Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai in parliament last December.

In 2021, India had among the most recorded cybercrimes in the world, after the US, Britain and Canada, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report of 2021.

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India’s poor digital literacy might have a role to play. Despite India’s 750 million smartphone users, government data show that just 38 per cent of households are digitally literate, defined by the Indian government as the ability to understand and use digital technologies like computers, laptops and smartphones.

Experts said these scams, though common, had now reached a dangerous tipping point, with the new wave of frauds that invite people to “earn” money through merely liking posts on social media.

Scammers are also using social media platforms to convince victims of their legitimacy, and scam tasks have evolved from asking victims to notionally “rent” industrial equipment in exchange for handsome rents to liking online posts and rating content online. Experts believe victims are easily convinced when they learn their “tasks” are based on established social media platforms.

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According to Dhanya Menon, a Kerala-based cybercrime investigator, these Instagram and YouTube scams came to light “only weeks ago” and were difficult to detect due to multiple factors.

One factor was that scammers were now claiming to be from companies that do exist in reality compared to previous tactics of using fictitious companies, said Menon.

“The other reason these scams are difficult to detect is because it is widely-known that likes and views on social media platforms are, often, manipulated,” Menon said. “Hence, victims are unsuspecting and get lured easily.”

Most scammers design an elaborate system with a “wallet” which shows victims what their “earnings” are. These wallets only show money notionally, none of this money is ever returned to the victims. Photo: Handout

In the northern city of Firozabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh, 22-year-old Yash Kumar agreed.

In February this year, Kumar, who just graduated as an engineer this year and was looking for jobs, received a message on WhatsApp similar to the one that Pandey received – a work-from-home job where all he had to do was like YouTube videos and boost their virality.

“I know that celebrities and influencers often use agencies to boost their engagement on social media, so I thought this was a part of one such operation,” Kumar said.

He was added to a group on the messaging app, Telegram. Kumar invested 1,000 rupees and earned 1,300 rupees when he completed a task. For the next task, they asked him to invest 3,500 rupees, for which he earned 4,400 rupees.

The demands for money kept increasing. Unemployed Kumar could not fund this, so he took loans from his family and friends. He spent 80,000 rupees and realised he could not spend any more, so he asked for his money back.

“But they told me my credit score was very low and hence, they could not return my money,” he said. “They also told me they could increase my credit score if I paid them 60,000 rupees.”

An example of a message scammers send to lure victims in. Photo: Handout

Seeing no way out, he borrowed some more and paid the amount. Just when he thought his nightmare had ended, the scammers came up with a new demand – that Kumar had to pay a “withdrawal tax” before the money can be returned. Hapless, and left with no choice, he borrowed some more.

In two days, he “invested” 278,000 rupees, most of it borrowed. But the scammers refused to pay and blocked him from Telegram.

Now, even before he can start his professional life, Kumar finds himself in debt that will take him a while to repay.

In the western city of Ahmedabad, Rohit Chawre had clicked on a WhatsApp message that promised him a steady part-time job – by rating films on an online movie database.

Chawre, who worked a temporary job at a power plant, lost over 1.13 million rupees. Most of it was money he borrowed from his mother, extended family members and friends.

In debt and with his job hunt yielding no luck, Chawre has taken a loan from the bank to repay all the outstanding debt.

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‘Needy’ victims

Shujaat Dutt (name changed on request), who lost nearly 250,000 rupees in December 2021 to a cyber fraud, said that most victims like him were “needy”. After his loss, Dutt has been trying to organise victims and raise awareness of these scams through a network of WhatsApp and Telegram support groups.

“I know victims who needed money desperately for their son’s medical treatment, or victims who wanted to fund their daughter’s marriage,” Dutt said. “In some ways, all the victims have needs they were looking to fulfil.”

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For Naresh Modi, that need was loneliness and a purpose in life.

In the nation’s capital New Delhi, Modi, 60, a retired executive who worked in one of India’s biggest private firms as a senior manager, had led a lonely life since his wife’s death from cancer last September. With his children settled in different cities, Modi thought the way to beat his loneliness would be a part-time professional role. A WhatsApp message he received in early April could be just what he needed, he thought.

All he had to do was to rate hotels on a website called trivagorating.com, which Modi mistook as the popular travel bookings portal, Trivago.

Modi lost over 4.3 million rupees – his entire retirement savings – in three days.

“I felt like I had been hypnotised,” he said.

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