Cyber police say accused in dating club scam used documents to buy SIM cards, open Paytm accounts

Investigations into the ‘dating club’ scam, which was busted by the Cyber police earlier this month, have revealed that the five arrested accused obtained hundreds of SIM cards using documents readily available on the Internet using a tool as simple as Google search. The revelation has highlighted not only the low security measures undertaken by most websites in India but also the negligible verification method undertaken by cellular service providers before selling SIM cards to customers.

The racket was busted with the arrest of five accused from Thane, who were allegedly offering membership to clubs where members, in exchange for a one-time payment of ₹1,000, interact and have casual sexual relations with members of the opposite sex. The accused had set up websites for three such clubs, which offered to arrange for hotel rooms and promised complete privacy.

The Cyber police confiscated a total of 310 SIM cards from offices serving as a front for the racket. The SIM cards were used to activate Paytm accounts to accept payments from the victims of the racket. The police have since then been probing how the accused managed to obtain so many SIM cards.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Akhilesh Singh, Cyber Crime said, “We have found out that the accused simply ran an image search for keywords like ‘election id’ and other documents required to obtain SIM cards on Google, and got hundreds of results. Some of them were samples of documents, while others were actual documents of people which were uploaded to some website or another for various reasons. The accused downloaded the images and used the ones that suited their needs.”

Officials said that as long as a website is linked to a search engine, which is something that almost all website creators do in order to generate more traffic, any content uploaded on the website can be accessed through search engines. What very few websites do, and what can be easily done, is to link to search engines but have privacy settings that forbid access to images or any other content, experts said.

A common crime

This is not the first time that criminal elements have used images off the internet to obtain SIM cards for use in criminal activities, taking advantage of the fact that the verification standards of cellular service providers are next to nil. Most companies accept self-attested copies of documents before issuing SIM cards, and there is no mechanism in place to check the authenticity of the documents.

Cyber expert Vijay Mukhi said, “Cellular service providers, in this respect, are like social media, where your market valuer depends on the number of users you have. If these companies start undertaking stringent verification methods, they would lose a huge bulk of their customers. The blame in this case also lies with e-wallet companies. You can set up a Paytm account using just your cell phone number.” An image search for ‘election ID card’ on Google by The Hindu yielded hundreds of results, which could be easily downloaded and printed. The search engine also provides suggestions of relevant searches, and the suggestions in this case included ‘passport’, ‘pan card’ and ‘pan card hd (high definition)’.

In February this year, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to set up a stringent mechanism to ensure 100% verification of SIM card users within a year. The apex court was hearing a PIL filed by an NGO which claimed that SIM cards bought using bogus documents were routinely used by criminals, terrorists and anti-social elements in their unlawful activities.