New Delhi: The strain in India-Canada relations over the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar has given cyber scammers in India a window to speed up operations and dupe Canadian senior citizens amid a halt in cooperation between the two countries in investigating cases of fraud, ThePrint has learnt.
According to sources in the Indian security establishment, more than a dozen requests for the recording of statements of victims under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) between the two countries are pending as Canada has stopped responding.
The MLAT was signed between the two countries for mutual assistance in criminal matters to improve the effectiveness of both countries in the investigation, prosecution and suppression of crime. The treaty was signed in 1994 but became operational in 1998.
“There was good cooperation between the Royal Canadian Mountain Police and the police agencies in India. But since the Nijjar controversy, the ties have been affected. Now, the Canadian authorities are not sharing any information related to any investigation,” a source said. “Till a few months ago, at least there was cooperation on cases related to scamming of senior citizens there, but with recent developments, now even that has stopped. So many MLAT requests are pending where we have asked for information from victims,” the source added.
According to the sources, on the other hand, they have been coordinating with the American authorities on similar cases despite the ongoing India-US diplomatic row after the US indictment of a former Indian R&AW officer for allegedly planning the assassination of lawyer and Sikhs for Justice leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
According to the source, tech support scams, which run from several call centres in India and Cambodia, target senior citizens in the US, the UK and Canada and are worth millions of dollars. Four such cases are under probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In one such case, officials busted a call centre in DLF Cyber City in July this year, catching over 40 Indians red-handed while they were speaking to people, especially the elderly, living in the UK, the US and Canada to dupe them.
That operation, the CBI said, had been running for the last two years, during which it had been duping elderly individuals across countries of millions of dollars every month. The agency sources said that the cyber scammers had been channelling the funds to Hong Kong via virtual assets and cryptocurrencies.
The people working in the call centre already had scripts—specific to each country—which they rehearsed before picking up the phone. They had also received training to get their accent right. According to the sources, they would contact targets in the name of tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Apple and use hacking claims to induce the targets to pay for unwanted technical support services.
“For such cases, the investigators have to get in touch with the victims, record their statements and access their bank details and the details of how the transactions were initiated, but all that has hit a dead end for now,” the source said.
‘A window’
The source said that as cyber scammers take advantage of the India-Canada non-cooperation, the scams are spiking.
“It is a menace. The scam operations are widespread. These scams have affected lakhs of people. Millions of dollars are getting scammed. Due to the existing non-cooperation, significant time is now being lost while the scammers are having a good time,” the source added.
The source said that India and Canada urgently need to realise the importance of cooperation in curbing crimes, especially in the cyber field, which transcends boundaries.
“This is beyond politics and diplomacy. It affects everyone. The Canadians must realise that their senior citizens are getting targeted daily and that non-cooperation will not serve any purpose,” he said. “We also need that information to investigate these cases. It is crucial that they cooperate,” the source added.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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