Miscellaneous
The long con
Internet scammers are increasingly ditching click-baits and engaging victims for months, before springing to action once having gained their trustDipesh Khatiwada
When 25-year-old Namita Shrestha (name changed) suspected that she was being conned, she had already deposited close to Rs 300,000 into a shady bank account. An unsuspecting 25-year-old from Dhading, Shrestha, who lives in a rented house with her younger brother in New Baneshwor, was new to the humdrum of city life and to the world of online networking when she received a message on her Facebook messenger from a German citizen, dubiously named Kane Johnson, sometime in mid-July this year.
What had started as an innocent friend request to Shrestha turned into a chain of conversations over a period of just a month. By then, they had exchanged phone numbers and talks of marriage had also made their way into phone calls and text messages. Johnson, who claimed to be a contractor and an engineer based in Europe, promised to come to Nepal and marry Shrestha as soon as he could.
Last week, Johnson called Shrestha to inform her that he was sending her a parcel with the Euro Trans Company, UK, through the London-India-Nepal route. It was a parcel allegedly weighing 45 kgs and had among other things a laptop, mobile phones and £50,000. Johnson also sent the tracking code number, a customs clearance letter and cargo bills. He told her to buy a house in Kathmandu as soon as she received the parcel.
A few days later, Johnson called again informing that the parcel was stuck in an Indian airport and that she should send some money to pay the custom’s charge to receive the parcel. Shrestha was then called from an Indian number, with a woman asking her to deposit Rs 54,000, to a Nabil Bank account in Kathmandu to clear the customs. After the deposit was made, the lady called again and requested her to deposit another Rs 127,000, owing to the parcel’s extra weight. This was followed by another call, stating that a four percent government tax needed to be paid to receive the parcel. By now, Shrestha had already deposited Rs 279,000 to the bank account. A few days later, she received another phone call asking her to deposit a further Rs 240,000.
Suspicious, Shrestha went to seek help with the Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD) in Teku, Kathmandu, thinking she was being scammed by the customs office. There she figured out that, that was not the case. She had indeed been conned. And she was not the only one.
Similar cases, like the one where a woman from Sindhuli district, who was conned of Rs 120,000 by a fraudster, a UK citizen by the name Mark Richard, were being cited at the MPCD’s office. Police investigators confirm that they deal with as many as 20 cases related to cybercrime on a daily basis. Deputy Superintendent of the Police, Pashupati Ray, of the MPCD, said they registered 10 similar swindling cases related to social networking sites within the past three months. “These fraudsters, who are usually Nigerian, Romanian and Turkish citizens, look for the opportunity to swindle innocent people; especially people who are trying to go abroad. And majority of the victims are women between the ages of 20 to 40,” said Ray.
Inspector Govinda Panthi, of the MPCD, traced the Nabil Bank account and tracked the account holder. The lady, yet to be made public by authorities, was working with a UK citizen named Osberus Toney Cole. Cole told the lady to send the deposited amount to India in the name of Samita Rai through IME or the hundi. She had been working for Cole for the past year.
Police teams investigating cybercrime in Nepal have confirmed that the rates of crimes on social media have significantly increased in the last few years. According to the records at the MPCD, in the fiscal year 2014-15, 309 cyber crimes were reported, of which only 31 cases were registered. Similarly, in 2015-16, 830 crimes were reported, while 23 cases were registered. In few months of the current fiscal year alone, there have been as many as 178 reported cybercrimes, with most of the cases centralised in the Kathmandu Valley and in the Central Development Region. There were only 91 such cases reported in 2013-14.
According to the Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA), 97 percent of the population in the Kathmandu Valley now have access to the internet. Internet usage through mobile phones is available to 45.64 percent of the nation’s population as of mid-October 2015, rising from a mere 8.49 percent in 2011. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experts credit the unprecedented increase of internet usage to the accelerating popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But with the boom of internet usage in Nepal, authorities are grappling with a sharp rise in complex, well-organised cyber crimes. If once, random emails claiming the receiver was entitled to vast sums in inheritance or a lottery win were rampant, fraudsters are now going in for the long con, whereby they engage a victim, like Namita, for months, before springing to action once having gained their trust (and often compromising texts and photographs).
Police investigators believe that online frauds are increasing due to reckless use of social media by users who are still learning about the dangers of an unregulated space like the internet. Senior Superintendent of Police, Sarbendra Khanal, of the MPCD said, “Online users should verify details, profiles and background before starting conversation with unknown social media users. People should be able to recognise the difference between genuine profiles and those of fraudsters before befriending them. A little caution goes a long way.” He added that they have been coordinating with Interpol to arrest the international criminals, but warns that scammers are no longer using simple click-baits to rope people in and are increasing their vast networks that operate with indiscriminate ruthlessness from various countries. “Cybercrime is on the rise, and will be for the foreseeable future. There is only so much that we can do, given that a vast majority of the cases go unreported. Internet users have to realise the potential pitfalls of networking on social sites. They must remain the first line of defence,” Khanal says.