3,000 Indians Trafficked To Cambodia By Chinese Cybercriminals; Forced To 'Honey-Trap' People With Nude Calls

The modus operandi of these cybercriminals was revealed by one Munshi Prakash, a B.Tech in civil engineering, Times of India reported.

HOW DID PRAKASH FALL PREY?

Employed at a Hyderabad-based IT firm, Prakash had posted his profile on several job sites in a bid to seek employment abroad.

He received a call from one Vijay, allegedly an agent in Cambodia, offering him a job in Australia. Prakash said that the man asked him to provide his travel history before going to Australia and gave him the tickets for Malaysia.

On March 12, Prakash -- a native of Mahabubabad's Bayyaram Mandal -- was taken to Phnom Penh, where Vijay's local representative took US dollars worth Rs 85,000 from him.

"Then Chinese nationals seized my passport and took me to Krong Bavet. It's a large compound with towers. I was put in Tower C, with other Indians. We were given ten days of training to create and use fake social media profiles of girls in Telugu and other languages," the Telangana resident was quoted as saying.

Prakash was reportedly put in a dark room and tortured for a week. He added that though they took him out when he got sick, but he was continued to be forced to do the scam.

HOW DID HE GET RESCUED?

"I managed to record a selfie video, narrating my traumatic experiences. I sent an email to my sister in Tamil Nadu, who informed the authorities," Prakash said.

Prakash's sister information prompted the Indian Embassy there and the state governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to rescue him.

Cambodian police reportedly rescued him from traffickers on April 16, but was later arrested on a fake charge which was framed against him by the Chinese gang.

The authorities found out that the charge was fake after Prakash spent 12 days in jail, following which he was sent back/deported to Delhi on July 5. Along with him, nine others were also rescued.

According to Prakash, as many as 3,000 Indians including several from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh residents are trapped in Cambodia.

From their detention camps, those trapped including the girls are forced to make nude calls. Prakash said that he met people from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Mumbai, Delhi and Karnataka, adding that all of them had been scammed into believing that they were going to get jobs abroad.

These cybercriminals convert the money they earn from this scam into cryptocurrency and then into US dollar before finally converting them into Chinese Yuan.