India’s new Jamtaras: How cybercrime hubs are spreading across the country

Most of us have heard of Jamtara, a small town in Jharkhand that has become notorious for being the capital of phishing scams. But what many may not know is that new locations have come up in the past few years which are now becoming known for cybercrime. In Deep Dive, Times of India’s Bharti Jain talks about the emergence of new centres of cyber fraud. Mewat, Azamgarh, Ahmedabad, Alwar, Surat, Bharatpur, Chittoor, Dhubri, Bhiwani, Jamui, Durgapur and Asansol are only some of the new emerging hotspots for online fraud. To tackle the increasing number of cybercrime instances, the government has set up the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, or the I4C as it’s called. The I4C is an umbrella organisation that coordinates between police forces of different states to tackle cybercrime, which may originate from one state and target a victim in another state. The I4C was set up in 2020 by the Union ministry of home affairs, and has already registered 20 lakh complaints till now, with 40,000 having been converted into FIRs. It has also onboarded 250 banks and financial intermediaries to assist the I4C in “real time action”. The type of cybercrimes reported range from phishing scams – that is fraud emails, to online blackmail and scamming people into giving their OTP/passwords. From fake online shopping portals to offering jobs in lieu of money and sending phishing links to mobile phones in order to extract money, cyber criminals are at it. Cyber experts say that criminals are procuring fake SIM cards from distant states to make the scam calls. New methods of duping and blackmailing people have come up. In one of the ways, the fraudster sends a link of a video call and then records the call, edits it with some pornographic content and threatens the victim. People are being cheated using just an SMS as well. From offering cashback to a free stay at a luxurious hotel and other freebees, several people receive an SMS leading to a scratch card portal. This is used to dupe people of their money. Fraudsters also make use of social media platforms like Facebook. Using fake profiles and a distress call for help leads to people losing money and becoming a victim of cyber fraud. Police sources say scammers target those who post advertisements for sale or purchase of second-hand motorcycles, cars, gadgets and other things of daily use. With phones near state borders intermittently catching telecom networks of different states, tracing crooks by their tower location becomes difficult. As a result, the tri-state junction of Mewat in Haryana, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and Bharatpur in Rajasthan has become highly active in carrying out cyber frauds.Audio production: Prateek Kapoor