I am sure you have come across those mails about “You have won $100 million lottery” or such similar mails. Most of you know that it is a scam and ignore it. However, there are many Indians who have fallen trap to such scams. Infact, Indians were defrauded for a whopping $870 million in 2013 according to Dutch financial intelligence organization Ultrascan-AGI.
So, if you are still not aware of how this scams work – Basically, naïve citizens are lured into a trap (through email) by telling them that they have won millions of dollar in some state lottery, and if they have to get their hands on it, they will need to pay a small advance fee. Nigerians are infamous for running these kind of scams. They are also called Advance Fee Frauds (AFF) and are also world’s most successful scam rackets.
The Ultrascan report states that globally till date, citizens have been defrauded for over $82 billion ($12.7B in 2013 alone). And these scams are still growing at 5% annually.
Indian’s have fallen for such scams big-time. Since 2006, there is an estimated 20-fold increase and currently there are about 4700 such scammers active and residing in India.
Here are countries with Top active scammers
According to the report, US residents have lost over $2.3 billion, China residents have lost $1.75 billion, UK residents have lost $1.2 billion followed by Indians at $870 million in 2013 alone.
Here is the amount of money lost of by Indians since 2006
What is even more interesting is how the money earned through these scams is being used by Fraudsters. According to HT report, about 80 percent of the earnings through such scams are shared with rings out side the country. In all probability these scams are becoming a source of revenue for terror groups across the world.
Apart from these scams, India is among the three of the largest counterfeit cheque producing countries in the world, which are produced by these AFF scammers.
Check out the entire report here.
