Today's Robocops

Not to be left behind by those using technology for all the wrong reasons,
the police force in India has adopted IT exactly where it matters the most-as
an effective investigative tool

An NRI from the Middle East was duped of more
than Rs 1 crore by means of cyber impersonation, employees of mPhasiS BPO in
Pune sieved off funds from a Citibank's New York account, a Chennai-based
credit card processing company for a PSU bank having its employee hacking into
card transaction details-2005 saw it all as hi-tech crimes flourished across
the country. The silver lining, however, was that the police forces across India
became IT smart, even as cyber crime went on to became mainstream. In fact,
other than all being misdemeanours of serious nature, the three cases mentioned
above shared a common facet-they won the top three positions in the Cyber Cop
Award instituted by the Mumbai Police in association with Nasscom.

Like many other public sectors where IT has eased the way of
life, the police forces across the country too have recognized the importance
and henceforth treaded out on the path of IT and automation to facilitate their
services to the citizens of the state. For a common man it would be an
unfamiliar scenario seeing khaki clad men frantically hitting at keyboards
tracing IP addresses and analysing server logs. One would associate such scenes
with Hollywood flicks or Tom Clancy novels. However, that's passé.

Police Force Automation Comes of Age

Not to be left behind by those using the technology for all the wrong
reasons, the police force in India has adopted technology (read IT) exactly
where it matters the most-as an effective investigative tool. While not many
of the state police have been able to integrate the citizen service part into
their system, most of them, including the investigating agencies have IT on top
of their agenda. What is further encouraging is the fact that police forces
across the country share the same enthusiasm in using IT tools as well as in
tracking cyber crimes. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that though
the Cyber Cops Awards were constituted by the Mumbai Cyber Lab associated with
the Mumbai Police, 16 entries were received from all over the country including
places like Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Pune and Karnataka besides
Mumbai.

No doubt, these are the signs of change. Noted Internet guru
Vijay Mukhi observes that the way crimes are going hi-tech, within the next one
year it would not be possible to separately segregate cyber crimes; not only
police officers across the country today are more aware about the IT Act and IPC
regulations related to cyber crimes, they are also helping citizens to become
aware of their rights and the support systems available to take legal actions.

The police forces today are keen to optimally leverage the
fruits of automation. The last two years have seen Kolkata Police, once
considered second in the world to only Scotland Yard, networking and automating
entire functions of its Lalbazaar HQ. More importantly, the West Bengal Police
deployed Finger Print Analysis and Criminal Tracing System (FACTS) at the CID
headquarter at Bhawani Bhawan in Kolkata. FACTS is an advanced automatic
fingerprint identification system (AFIS), which is comprised of a server, three
workstations and a mobile FACTS unit. The biggest benefit of FACTS is that the
central system can be spread over to any remote police station all over the
state.

The Andhra Pradesh police too have tasted spectacular
success with FACTS-it has a FACTS central system in Hyderabad, and one FACTS
finder in each of its 28 district headquarters. It has also deployed vCops, an
integrated enterprise-wide tool for increasing the efficiency of police units.
Various states and Union territories such as Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana, J&K,
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Meghalaya and Goa too are jumping into the FACTS bandwagon.

Since breaking the Cronjegate scandal a few years back,
Delhi Police has also been riding the vanguard of automation. It has started
installing GPS devices in around 400 mobile PCR vans to ensure round-the-clock
monitoring of the vans' whereabouts through a digitised city map. The new
Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) system inaugurated at the Connaught
Place police station soon intends to interlink 122 police stations across the
Capital. It has started incorporating web-based systems to enable people to
lodge FIRs online and cyber laboratories to ensure that no tampering is done to
evidences till they reach the courts.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), located at New
Delhi under the Ministry of Home Affairs. NCRB has installed till date 740
server-based computer systems at every District Crime Records Bureau and State
Crime Records Bureau, across the country, under a modernization project of MHA
by the name 'Crime Criminal Information system' (CCIS). This helps NCRB
maintain a national-level database of crimes, criminals and property
connected/involved in crime. It was also the first organization to have
installed FACTS in India.

CCIS is perhaps one of the biggest police application
software in the world networking 28 states and 7 union territories and 728
Police Districts. It has achieved some spectacular successes too-the Karnatka
police in Kolar Gold Field detected the involvement of one criminal 'Gopi'
in 36 cases through CCIS software while in Aurangabad range, the Maharastra
Police could identify 153 cases. CCIS has been customized to four Indian
languages—Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and Gurmukhi, while data warehousing and
data mining tools too have been incorporated into it.

The MphasiS Case

The first prize in the Cyber Cop award was given to Sanjay Jadhav, ACP and
chief of the Cyber Crime Cell of the Pune police. Four employees of mPhasiS BPO
in Pune and a handful of their associates were arrested by the Pune police on
charges of defrauding four Citibank account holders in one of its New York
branches, a client serviced by mPhasiS, to the tune of $3,50,561. These
employees had either through goodwill or on false pretences obtained the
personal identification numbers from these account holders in the course of
work. Subsequently they transferred money from four accounts of the New
York-based customers into their own accounts opened under fictitious names from
cyber cafes.

After receiving the complaint the entire business process of
the complainant firm was studied and a systems analysis was conducted to
establish the possible source of data theft. During the investigation the system
server logs of mPhasiS were collected. The IP addresses were traced to the ISP
and ultimately to the cyber cafes through which illegal transfers were made. The
registers maintained in Cyber Cafes and the owners of Cyber Cafes assisted in
identifying the other accused in the case. The e-mail IDs and phone call print
outs were also procured and studied to establish the identity of the accused.
The e-mail accounts of arrested accused were scanned which revealed vital
information to identify the other accused. Some e-mail accounts of the accused
contained the SWIFT codes, which were required for Internet money transfer.

The investigating officers led by Jadhav then laid a trap in
a local bank, which was used for illegally transferring the amount, during which
two people were arrested. Soon all 17 accused were arrested in the case in a
short span of time. The deftness of the IT savvy cops in proper collection of
electronic evidence and their documentation also meant that the police was able
to make the charge-sheet within the stipulated time. It also meant that out of
Rs 1.9 crore that the crooks had transferred, the bank was able to block the
transfer of Rs 90 lakh in transit. Besides, thanks to timely detection, the bank
account of the accused with Rs 20 lakh in balance was frozen and the police also
recovered cash, ornaments, vehicles and other articles amounting to Rs 30 lakh.

The Woman Trap

The first runner up award that was bagged by Police Inspector Deepak Dhole
of Mumbai Police for solving a case where an Abu Dhabi based NRI was cheated and
duped to the tune of Rs 1.25 crore, could easily make for an exciting Bollywood
masala film.  It all started with an
Abu Dhabi based NRI receiving an exciting email from a Kolkata-based woman. Soon
the woman lured the man to send a laptop and some mobile phones via a mediator.
The bait obviously was the promise of sexual favor.

After some more drama of blackmail, promise to meet in a
hotel and the decision of the man to stop all communications with her, the woman
started threatening to commit suicide.  Through
a series of drama, that includes suicide by the woman, threat of arrest by the
police, help from another women and an advocate, the man was soon paying through
his nose. Next came in a third woman supposedly based out of US. This is
followed by another round of drama with the US-based woman leaving to meet him
in Dubai and vanishing.  A mail from
the New York Police informing him that they are investigating the case along
with the Kolkata Police leaves the man completely shattered. Soon he found
himself paying again to the woman # 2 and the advocate to save his skin.

During investigation the police was quick to figure out that
this was the handiwork of someone in India itself. Thankfully, the man had saved
all the e-mails exchanges and that was enough for the Mumbai police sleuths-IP
address of the e-mails received by complainant revealed that of the e-mails came
from a leading cement company and a residential address in Mumbai. They also
tracked a bank account at Chembur. The man was eventually arrested and put
behind bars. Thanks to the tech savvy investigating team, the Mumbai police was
able to crack the case in less than 15 days of registering the FIR.

The Credit Card Fraudster

While Pune and Mumbai grabbed the first two Cyber Cops Awards, the Chennai
Police ACP S Balu and his team emerged the second runners up. This was a typical
case of the fence eating the crops, with an employee of the company using multi
pronged hacking methods gained administrative rights that enabled him to alter
the credit card entries-from changing maximum credit limits to address and
even reversing the entries.

In a span of 18 days between May 21, 2005 and June 9, 2005,
the fraudsters swindled a sum of Rs 7.22 lakh by conspiring with an employee of
the company who manipulated the entries in the system, thereby enabling the
credit card holder to avail credit above the ceiling. 

On receiving the complaint the investigating team decided to
first analyse the processes and the software. It was evident that to meet out
the emergency situation, lifting the financial limit of the cardholder was
possible by making manual entry by an authorised person. While analysing the
software, it was found out that the software had the facility of writing for
changing address, blocking and un-blocking of the card, authorizations for cash
transactions from bank, and to reverse the transaction in an emergency situation
to increase the credit limit temporarily.

It was observed that each operator in the process management
firm was provided with unique individual passwords for accessing the system in
which the “Vision Plus” software was installed. Temporary password was
issued only when their independent password was blocked. The accused used the
security feature that blocked the existing password in case it was wrongly
entered thrice to exploit the system by purposely entering his independent
password wrongly thrice in a row. This resulted in blocking of his password and
he was able to obtained a temporary passwords for committing the crime. The
accused made reverse entry manually in the additional card account as if to show
that the amount spent was repaid and thereby lifted the ceiling limit for the
card every now and then. The accused also changed the original address of
primary cardholder and entered false address in the customer database to prevent
the monthly outstanding statement be ing sent to the primary cardholder.

By analysing the data from the employee's attendance
register and in-time register, the police was able to establish the use of the
temporary password assigned to the accused for committing the crime. Soon, on
July 19, 2005 the accused were arrested.

Minu
Sirsalewala 

minuvs@cybermedia.co.in


With inputs from Shrikanth G