financial fraud

Economic offences and organised crime

Economic offences and organised crime

Online business transactions and financial fraud

Economic offences and organised crime landscape across the globe including India has changed drastically in the past decade -in large part due to advancements in technology. Criminals quickly adopt and integrate new technologies into their modus operandi or self styled novel business models are woven around them. The use of new technologies by organised crime groups (OCGs) has an impact on criminal activities across the spectrum of white-collar crime and organised crime. This includes expansion of online trade and widespread availability of encrypted communication channels, as well as other aspects of technological innovation such as more accessible and cheaper drone technology, and advanced 3D printing technologies.

Today technology has become a key component of most of the organized crimes, if not all, and criminal activities carried   out by organized crime groups in India has afforded an unprecedented degree of flexibility to carry out phishing/ vishing/ online seams within and across border. Economic offences and organised crime has become a key threat to the national security and public safety in India. Criminal groups and individual criminals continue to generate large turnover in terms of cash profits from their activities each year. Some aspects of the organised  crime landscape have changed drastically in recent years

—In large part due to advancements in technology that have had a profound impact on the involvement of criminal gangs spreading across wider society and economy.

In a recent survey based study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and SAS (statistical analysis system) among its members worldwide, it was revealed that Data Analytics Apps proved indispensable in helping businesses across industries control/ effectively deal with pandemic-driven fraud. The benefits were particularly evident in banking and financial services. Almost half (45%) of banking and financial sector survey respondents reported that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their organizations’ use of data analytics to combat fraud. Nearly all (99%) indicated their analytics capabilities helped them boost the volume of transactions involving suspected fraudulent cases identified.

Growing trend of cyber enabled financial crimes

Growing trend of cyber enabled financial crimes

The Internet is a hunting ground for cyber criminals

Crime has also moved online, and cyber-enabled financial crimes, such as business email compromise, CEO fraud (where cybercriminals impersonate executives), e-commerce scams and investment fraud, have escalated in nearly every region. Today’s ransomware attacks target ‘big game’ targets, including major corporations, governments and critical infrastructure. To maximize harm and illicit profit, strategies have shifted to techniques like double extortion, where victims’ data or files are both encrypted and threatened with public exposure, compounding the risks of business disruption and reputational damage.

While world governments have their hands full dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, shady cyber heist operators are busy working the other way creating a vast fortune, to the tune of $6 trillion by 2021 end alone.

If that total amount is a country’s GDP, it’s next only to the income of the US and China as all of us know India is at $3 trillion mark and planning to touch $5 trillion in next 5 years after crossing the economic indicators of Britain.

Technology keeps evolving at a rapid pace, so do cybercrooks. Apart from newer forms of cyber threats, even the oldest tricks in the book are not completely useless for these cybercriminals. They take these tricks out of the box and make modifications and updates to bypass security measures especially created for them.

Truth Labs has performed a number of forensic investigations of financial fraud and accounting for public sector and corporate clients.

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