CHENNAI: Immigration officers at the Chennai international airport on Tuesday arrested two Malaysians allegedly in possession of over 100 Indian sim cards, purportedly to be used by cybercrime syndicates operating in Laos, Cambodia, and other parts of the infamous Golden Triangle.
Official sources identified the accused as San Meng Hong and Liong Rong Cheng. After initial formalities, they were handed over to CB-CID.
The sources said the two had gone to Mumbai to recruit Indians to the Golden Triangle and exploit them in call centres carrying out cyber scams like Fedex scam, online trading scam, Loan app scam etc. This is termed as the cyber slavery scam by state police.
This is the second such arrest of and seizure of sim cards from Malaysians by immigration officials at the Chennai airport recently. On June 16, Malaysian native Lee Tiek Yein (32) was arrested from Chennai airport with 22 fraudulently obtained sim cards.
The case was handed over to Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Greater Chennai Police who arrested seven more people on June 18, including three Malaysians Tang Ching Kun, Ganesan and Mahendran, and seized 550 SIM cards, two laptops, 33 bank accounts, 20 ATM cards, a BMW car, and some Malaysian and Singapore currencies.
Sources in Chennai police said the case was later handed over to CB-CID, which is pursuing a comprehensive state-wide probe into this menace. The agency has registered nine cases across southern Tamil Nadu districts and arrested people running illegal recruiting agencies.
According to official sources, the sim cards were acquired through black marketers operating on instant messaging platforms like Telegram. After activation, these sim cards are sent abroad and linked with bank accounts of multiple shell companies. The sim cards are also used to run Whatsapp or Telegram accounts to contact victims and defraud them.
The shell companies play an important role in the entire scam process. The money siphoned off from victims is routed and layered through the bank accounts linked to these companies as well as accounts of other mules which are rented through Telegram.
The fraudulently obtained funds are later converted into cryptocurrency to avoid detection and recovery by Indian agencies.
In case these crypto assets are identified and seized by Indian enforcement agencies as proceeds of crime, a risk they face is its depreciation. To counter this, the Enforcement Directorate had in a recent case obtained a direction from a special court and converted seized cryptocurrency assets into legal tender.