Investigations targeting online scammers this week resulted in a major raid in the Puttalam area. According to the Police, the latest arrest involved over 50 foreign nationals who engaged in online scams while living in the country illegally. While the arrests of over 50 scammers is not a simple matter, recent media reports, which claim that over 200 such foreign scammers have been nabbed in the recent past in Sri Lanka, indicates that the issue is larger than it was reported.
The victims are ordinary people. They get added to social media or communication app-based groups such as WhatsApp by people with local names and local numbers. They are told that tasks as simple as liking or sharing a social media post makes them eligible to earn a few hundred rupees, which, in the first instance, actually happens. However, as victims keep repeating this to earn bigger and bigger amounts, they get invited to deposit money in order to receive bigger tasks, which allegedly pays more. This is when unsuspecting people get scammed.
While arresting scammers and investigating these scams are of great importance, to successfully curb them, the authorities need to take into account the nature of these crimes as well. These crimes do not target one specific party or person. They target unsuspecting ordinary citizens, and a significant share of the population, especially those with low digital literacy, could be at risk. Therefore, while taking every measure in terms of enforcing the law, educating those at risk of being victims of these scams should be a priority. While it would help reduce the number of victims, it can also create a wide network of individuals who, upon being approached by scammers, will assist the law enforcement authorities by providing information about who reached them.
The people need to know more about these scams than what they can learn from the news. To ensure that, the authorities should pay great attention to raising awareness among the ordinary citizens. The law enforcement authorities can use online platforms, one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest methods, to do that with the resources that they have. Launching a national programme on online scams targeting those with low digital literacy would be ideal.
In addition to probes led by the law enforcement authorities, other tech-related authorities also need to get involved. The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission and the Computer Emergency Readiness Team could become more active actors in this fight against online scammers, and the law enforcement authorities need to come up with a plan to include these institutions’ resources as well in their fight.
At the same time, in a context where Sri Lanka has paid attention to extradition agreements with other countries, the authorities’ efforts should also include building partnerships with foreign authorities with a focus on online scams as well. Some foreign nationals arrested during recent arrests had engaged in online gambling activities which were illegal in their home country. In such a context, building such international partnerships would allow local authorities to receive information about identified scammers in other countries, thereby enabling local authorities to identify such persons the moment they reach Sri Lanka’s ports. Even when identifying arrested scammers, such partnerships would be immensely useful.
Cyber crimes are an evolving and expanding challenge. As access to digital devices increases and newer technologies emerge, cyber criminals as well as victims of cyber crimes increase. Therefore, in the long run, legal and procedural reforms to more effectively deal with online scams will be a pressing need. It has already become a pressing need, although Sri Lanka has a long way to go.
As long-term measures, the Police’s cyber crimes units should be provided with more resources and skills, laws should be introduced to deport and blacklist those arrested for online scams, and procedures should be introduced to monitor and weaken online scamming groups before they could become national-level criminals.