Government designates nodal agency for investigation of phone frauds

The Times of India
Bharti jain
February 15, 2018

NEW DELHI: An inter-ministerial committee on phone frauds has designated the Intelligence Bureau’s wing for coordinating matters relating to fake Indian currency notes (FICN) as the nodal agency to liaise with the states and Union territories on investigation of phone frauds. The FICN coordination committee (FCORD) will develop a web-based platform for synergy among various law enforcement agencies and nodal officers of e-wallet companies.

In a recent letter written to the chief secretaries of all states and UTs, the home ministry informed that RBI had been requested to direct all e-wallet service providers to appoint a central nodal officer as well as state nodal officers in case of large companies, for coordination with the law enforcement agencies. The list of such nodal officers may be furnished to the FICN coordination committee, it said.

The home ministry, in the letter dated February 12, also asked the states/UTs to designate an additional DGP or inspector-general of police, Crime, to coordinate with FCORD, besides seeking a more robust information exchange network and enhanced cooperation in busting inter-state gangs engaged in phone frauds. The states/UTs were asked to share best practices and suggestions with FCORD to curb phone frauds, coordinate multi-agency actions to be taken in villages/towns from where phone frauds mostly emanate, and start a widespread awareness campaign to educate consumers about the modus operandi of phone fraud syndicates.

Concerned that the increasing use of digital payments, especially through debit/credit cards and e-wallets, had led to a rise in phone frauds, the letter mentioned that home minister Rajnath Singh had in September 2017 reviewed measures to check phone frauds. The meeting had decided to constitute an inter-ministerial committee on phone frauds under the home ministry, to periodically review various aspects of dealing with phone frauds.

Stating that frauds were mostly committed using a payment card to fraudulently transfer funds to an e-wallet account with the purpose of obtaining goods without paying or to obtain unauthorised funds from an account, the home ministry said frauds in most cases involved an amount less than Rs 50,000.

“Few cases are of the kind where the customer himself revealed the debit/credit card details, ATM Pin or OTPs, while in other cases frauds were committed without the customer being at fault or being aware of it. In such frauds, the cheated money is routed first to e-wallets,” said the home ministry.

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