The amusing ingenuity of the indigenous ‘jugad’ in faking an entire Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket series may have stoked the palate for juicy rib ticklers, but it represents just the tip of the iceberg in the country’s march to international notoriety as a ‘con’ and crime hub.
Creating money out of mud’ is blooming a business, they say in Gujarat. Thus the far-sightedness and earning acumen of the natives who conjured up an IPL environment in the rural confines of a Vadnagar village in north Gujarat and dressed it enough to con the gambling inclined and make them cough up cash in far-off Russia and the European Union, calls for a backhanded compliment, even if the crime cannot be condoned. The drool and drip of filthy lucre were incentive enough to boost the derring-do of the organisers who had lined up a year-long schedule when the rouble rush brought sniffing cops to the makeshift playground ending the innovative initiative.
Whether the con call centres, the bitcoin scams or the con-betting blitz – of which the fake IPL was but a tiny manifestation – the con consortium has spread its tentacles India-wide and is now a behemoth which can easily dwarf a large size corporate in India.
According to a US-based group researching the field, just one group of scammers on Telegram has 55,000 members in India. The group penetrated a fake call centre in Gujarat and found that it made US$18 million a year through such dubious means or US$ 60,000 per day, working six days a week….
