India’s Digital Dream, Hacked

India’s digital revolution has exposed millions to a criminal dystopia. This is the story of a neurologist placed under “digital arrest”; a farmer promised a job that would set him up for life; a young man arranging mule bank accounts; and a newlywed who joins the crypto underworld. 

By Natalie Obiko Pearson and Suparna Sharma

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
India's digital dream hacked. India's digital revolution has exposed millions
to a criminal dystopia. This is the story of a
neurologist placed under digital arrest, a farmer promised a job
that would set him up for life, a young man
arranging mule bank accounts, and a newlywed who joins the

(00:20):
crypto underworld by Natalie Obiko Pearson and Suparna Sharma Read
aloud by Mark Ledorf. One Ruchika Look Now, India, August
twenty twenty four. She races into her bedroom, shuts the
door behind her, then falls to the checkered tile floor.

(00:41):
The only place to hide is beneath the bed. She
wriggles under, struggling to keep her smartphone in place so
its camera remains trained on her face. One of the
rules she must follow no visitors. But her uncle dropped
by unannounced and her mother let him in. So here
she is hiding, trying not to make a sound, staring
at the phone as it stares at her. On the screen,

(01:04):
she sees the crest for India's Central Bureau of Investigation.
She can hear her uncle outside the room, his voice,
his footsteps. What if he walks in? She squirms deeper
under the bed and waits for a half hour, maybe
an hour, doing as she's been told before she received
the call, before the caller center the seventy Rules of Surveillance.

(01:25):
Ruchika Tandon, a neurologist in the northern city of Luknow,
had a routine a two hour swim each morning, an
eight hour shift that often stretched to twelve at one
of the country's top teaching hospitals, guitar lessons in the evening.
She'd been a class topper, as they say in India,
passing every major academic exam on her first try. She

(01:46):
took care of her mother and son in the same
two story house with the rusty gate that she'd been
raised in. Her life was stable, her days predictable, her
bearing on assuming the expectations of her met. The phone
had hijacked that life. Its little black eye always on her.
It watches her when she washes her face, It watches

(02:07):
her when she cooks, and when she finishes, the voice
on the other side says, now you can eat. It
even watches her when she sleeps, And all those rules,
each shrinking the world around her. No turning off the camera,
no social media, no texts or calls, no unapproved purchases,
no attempting to escape two Priya Bargar, Odisha state. Haapriya

(02:33):
Pradan is thirty one when she marries in December twenty
twenty two, nearly a decade older than the average wedding
age for women in her home state of Odisha on
the Bay of Bengal. Growing up on the poor side
of a poor state, Priya, as she liked to be called,
had big plans. She studied for an MBA, made her
way to Delhi, and by her late twenties was back

(02:54):
in Odisha, leading a small sales team at the branch
of a top Indian private insurer. Online, she presented as
a young woman with urban sass, zara loafer's converse hoodie,
puckered crimson lips, and long, silky black hair artfully tousled.
She posted hashtag self love, hashtag self care. Beauty is

(03:16):
skin deep, but attitude.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Is to the bone.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
In much of India, views on smart ambitious women can
be complicated. Education and careers are important until they aren't.
Ads flood newspapers and shaddy dot com seeking brides who
are accomplished, hold advanced degrees yet are still homely, as
in literally willing to stay home once wedded. It took
only an hour for Bolesh Comrie to decide Priya was

(03:43):
the one. She had lived outside. As he puts it,
she had a certain wilfulness he attributed to her time
in the big city Delhi. But she also came from
a good family, and he thought shared his values like
a deference for elders. Priya moves in with her new
extended family, her husband Bowlesh, her mother in law, brother

(04:03):
in law, his wife, and their child. They cram into
a one story pink house in Bargar, a sleepy district
with a disproportionate number of auto parts shops. She chafes
at her new life. She likes wearing jeans and t shirts,
but women in Bargar wear saris or dresses. Why should
I change what I'm wearing, Priya asks Bolesh. In Hinduism,

(04:26):
a reverence for food runs deep. It's not to be wasted,
but Priya, instead of giving leftovers to the cows and dogs,
tosses the scraps, setting off quarrels with her mother in law.
Priya finds escape at a newly opened branch of a
small regional bank working as a low level manager. It's
a bleak posting in a half constructed building and business

(04:46):
is slow. That's all right, because she has other work
on the side. She's joining Telegram and WhatsApp groups on
her phone learning about investing in cryptocurrency. Bolesh doesn't understand
why she feels the need to make more money. Between
his income as a physiotherapist and her salary, they're doing
well ten times the state's average rural household income.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
What do we lack, he asks her.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
It is not how much we have, but how much
we enjoy. That makes happiness. Priya had posted earlier on Facebook.
But if one can have more and still enjoy, why not.
There's a catch. Her funds are frozen. To unlock them,
her new telegram acquaintances say she must send more money.
With help from Bolesh and her siblings, Priyat cobbles together

(05:33):
two million, twelve thousand, seven hundred rupees about twenty two,
four hundred and forty dollars, a small fortune enough to
construct a house in many Indian cities. In March twenty
twenty three, three months into her marriage, Priyat checks the
details of the eleven payees. She's been instructed to transfer
the money too. She types her username one zero eight eight,

(05:55):
one five three two into the website, then she sends
it all.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Three.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Govind Gonda, Uttar Pradesh state. It's early twenty twenty four
and Govin Tripathi stares bleakly across his fields near Gonda
in Uttar Pradesh, one of India's northern bread basket states.
Soon it would be time to harvest the pulses, wheat
and mustard sown during the winter. He needs a bumper crop.

(06:23):
Five years earlier, he'd quietly sold off his wife's mangosutra
wedding necklace and their gold wedding bands and taken a
three hundred thousand rupee loan to pay for his mother's
cancer medications. She died a year later. His father soon followed,
and with him disappeared the government pension that had supported
the extended family. Half the loan remained, and what Govind needs.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Now is cash.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
His six acres of farmland, passed down across generations, grows
enough to feed the family, but not enough to turn
a profit. The stray cows don't help. Since twenty fourteen,
Narindra Moodi's Hindu nationalist government has sought to end the
butchering and trading of cattle, an occupation long dominated by Muslims,
even setting up a cow welfare agency in twenty nineteen,

(07:10):
and the population of stray cows has exploded. Govind, like
any devout Hindu, revers the sacred animals. But this is
getting out of hand. The beasts are devouring his livelihood,
munching on anything that sprouts. Jobs are scarce in his
rural village and Govind is no entrepreneur. He still has
a pile of inventory from a clothing shop that never

(07:32):
took off. Married at nineteen, he spent two decades working
the land. There's one opportunity if Govind is willing to travel.
He learned about it from Satisha and Surindra, two friends
who were like family. They grew up together in Gonda.
They tell him there's a decent job in Derra Dun,
a town in the foothills of the Himalayas, about six

(07:53):
hundred and fifty kilometers or four hundred miles northwest in
Uttarakhand state. They just returned Trum a gig and their
employers say there's work again. Come back with two more
friends something feels off about the offer. Govin doesn't really
understand what the job is, some kind of office work
that pays twenty thousand rupees a month, almost too generous

(08:16):
for someone with his background. It makes him nervous to
think of leaving his wife and daughter alone at home
for months. He has never lived anywhere but this brick
home built by his father, with its powder blue walls
and jasmine tree by the front door. Govind tries to
find resolve in his brother in law's advice. Nothing happens

(08:36):
without trying. Four the whistleblower Jalandar, Punjab State. In twenty fifteen,
Barat Bushan opened a tiny shop with plywood shelves in
the northern Punjabi town of Jalandhar. In his early thirties.
He was part of a new wave of entrepreneurs bringing
basic services closer to millions of Indians. His spare Kiosk, computer, monitor,

(09:00):
desk and chair became a lifeline.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Locals came to pay.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Electricity bills, top up their mobile phones, or book railway tickets,
chores that otherwise meant treks to distant service centers or
hours in government queues. India was on the cusp of
a digital revolution that would soon send customers flocking to
kiosks like his. Over the previous two decades, the country
had shifted from landlines to mobile phones, but cellular services

(09:28):
remained too costly to bring India fully online. Then came
Mukesh Umbani, Asia's richest man, famed for spotting opportunities, who
upended the market in late twenty sixteen with Reliance Geo.
His nationwide four G network slashed data costs to the
world's lowest, putting high speed Internet within reach of anyone

(09:48):
with a cheap smartphone. Prime Minister Modi, too, pledged to
knit the country together with high speed networks under an
initiative called Digital India. The bedrock for that transition was Adhar,
a new biometric identification system spearheaded by Nandan Nikolaikhani, co
founder of tech giant Infosis. Until twenty ten, India had

(10:11):
no equivalent to the US Social Security number. Many people,
mostly poor, often rural, couldn't prove their identity and were
thereby shut out of the formal economy. They couldn't buy
a simcard, open a bank account, or access government benefits.
Adhar meaning Foundation changed that issuing a unique twelve digit

(10:31):
number linked to a person's fingerprints and iris scan. I
think in the next several years, India will become the
most digitized economy, Bill Gates told an audience in Delhi
in November twenty sixteen. All of the pieces are now
coming together, he said, it's a pivotal moment in India's history.
Registering one point three billion people in Adhar proved fiendishly complex.

(10:54):
The fingerprints and iris scans of each new registrant had
to be compared against those of all previous regis. To
speed the process, the government turned to private operators, such
as Barrat. In twenty sixteen, he took out a loan
to buy a biometric scanning machine for seventy thousand rupees,
then set to enrolling people and printing Adhar cards. Business

(11:15):
was brisk. Adhar was supposed to be voluntary, but its
expediency soon made it a de facto requirement for everything
buying a car, tracking a lost Amazon package, registering on
a matchmaking website, getting treated at a hospital. People across
the country lined up for an Adhar number. At first,
Barrat's was the only kiosk in the neighborhood. Before long

(11:37):
others caught on. Within months, Adhar Kiosk's mushroomed across the country.
In Bihar, near the border with Nepal, one entrepreneurial sixteen
year old named Rishikesh Kumar opened one, gaining a toe
hold into a world coursing with the private details of
hundreds of millions of citizens. Operators received a little vetting.

(11:58):
Inspectors came maybe twice to Barat's kiosk, and only to
check if there was a water cooler, enough chairs and
adequate waiting space. He recalls for technical support. Barat and
some fellow operators had an informal WhatsApp group where they
shared information on software updates and the like. By late
twenty sixteen, India had issued more than a billion Adhar numbers,

(12:20):
opened two hundred and sixty million bank accounts, and brought
four hundred and ten million people online in less than
a decade. By making it easy to verify identities and
link bank accounts, Adhar also enabled the rise of a
homegrown instant payment system that began transforming the country's cash
based economy into a digital one. Street sellers and rickshaw

(12:41):
drivers started flashing QR codes to customers who had a
stroke could transfer payment from their phones. Modi accelerated this
shift in November twenty sixteen by withdrawing India's highest value banknotes,
accounting for eighty six percent of the currency in circulation,
to combat corruption and taxi. India proved gates right. Undergoing

(13:03):
the fastest most ambitious digital transformation in history. It became
the world's top consumer of mobile data per user. Its
Internet users are set to surpass nine hundred million. Its
instant payment system processes half of all global real time transactions.
The Adhar program was lauded by experts for its scalability

(13:24):
and security, but it had a fundamental flaw. India had
created a lock box, yet kept giving a peek inside
to telecom companies, banks, courier companies, airlines, you name it.
By mid twenty seventeen, the government began restricting access for
private operators like Barrat, along with thousands of other small
time entrepreneurs. He was about to lose his livelihood. Around

(13:48):
that time, Barat noticed new participants in the WhatsApp group
hawking of software. They promised would maintain access to the
Adhar system for a nominal fee of two hundred to
three hundred rupees. I wanted to try and understand the
software what it was, Barrat recalls. He purchased it, got
a new ID and password and entered the system. He

(14:09):
typed in an Adhar number and the system spat back
all the registrants details name, address, phone number, photo.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
This was odd.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Previously he couldn't retrieve such details, he could only input them.
He tried another Adhar number, and another and another, all
with the same result. I felt something was very, very wrong.
Over the next few months, he tried to alert authorities.
He called and sent hundreds of emails to the Unique
Identification Authority of India, which oversees Adhar. He went in

(14:41):
person to several regional government offices to show them the
software firsthand. He even emailed Modi for about three dollars
and fifty cents. Barat had bought access to a database
containing the private details of a billion plus people, one
of the biggest data breaches of all time, and no
no one cared. Eventually, Barat got the attention of a

(15:03):
local newspaper reporter who replicated Barat's steps, verified the breach,
and published an account. Modi's ruling Baratia Janata Party responded
by tweeting from its official account fake news. It's unknown
how many unauthorized people had access or how much data
was downloaded. In twenty twenty three, an American cybersecurity firm

(15:26):
discovered hundreds of millions of ADHAR records for sale on
the dark web. Unlike leaked passwords or credit card numbers,
biometrics can't be changed once they're stolen. They pose a
lifelong risk. The day after the newspaper story was published,
Baratt was rewarded for whistleblowing by having his access to
government services cut off. He folded his service center and

(15:48):
opened a business repairing kitchen appliances. Unauthorized groups are still
out there offering access to ADHAR, evidence that the government's
ID system remains vulnerable, he said in June at his
new show. They know what's happening, but they can't stop it.
Five Ruchika, August first, twenty twenty four. Ruchika, the neurologist,

(16:10):
is running late one Thursday morning in August of twenty
twenty four. When the call comes at around eight, Normally,
she'd be swimming her laps. It's still early for a call,
but it might be a patient. She presses the button
on her keypad phone to answer. A man says he's
calling from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Your number
is being suspended, he says, telling her that twenty two

(16:33):
criminal complaints have been registered against her number. Is she
aware of these complaints? No, someone may be using her
personal information fraudulently.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
He says.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
He'll transfer her to the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI.
The voice of another man comes on. He identifies himself
as Rahul Gupta, Chief Investigation Officer, badge number FA two
six three five two one. He speaks sternly, sparsely. She's
a suspect in a criminal case involving the collapse of
Jet Airways, India's second largest airline. Ruchika vaguely recalls the

(17:08):
headlines from a year earlier, when investigators arrested the founder,
Naresh Goyal, on allegations that he'd laundered money siphoned from
the airline's bank loans. Gupta tells her there's evidence, including
an audio recording, that her accounts were used to launder funds.
Ruchika's mind blanks. This must be a mistake. At forty

(17:29):
one years of age, she's never set foot in a
police station, never received a traffic citation. She'd become a
doctor by abiding by the rules, slogging through the rigid
syllabi of India's education system. Just four nights earlier, she
was in Delhi accepting an award for her research into
movement disorders and Parkinson plus syndromes. What's going on? But

(17:51):
Ruchika isn't getting time to think. Inspector VJ. Khana from
the Mumbai Cyber Crime Office is now on the line.
He has a warrant for her or arrest and local
police are on their way. They'll reach her home in
five minutes. There's one alternative. Ruchika could agree to be
placed under digital custody and interrogated remotely over Skype. But

(18:14):
her case falls under India's Official Secrets Act, so she
can't mention this to anyone, not even her mother or son.
She must make a decision quickly. Conna says, what would
people think if she were taken away handcuffed by police?
What would that mean for her son? I'll take digital custody,
she tells Kana. But she can't get on Skype. She

(18:35):
doesn't use a smartphone. Get out and buy one. He instructs,
otherwise we'll have to arrest you. Ruchika recalls. There's an
electronics store nearby on a busy circle next to the
metro stop. She goes as soon as it opens at
eleven am and picks out a black Samsung Galaxy F
fifteen with a glossy six point six inch display. Make

(18:55):
sure you install Skype, Gupta and Kana had instructed. She
asks the to help download the apps. Until now, Ruchika
had avoided upgrading to a smartphone. Everything was moving online,
bill payments, shopping, access to bank accounts. Everyone wants you
to download this app and that app to transact. Even
her patients didn't want to come to the hospital anymore.

(19:18):
They wanted to do things over WhatsApp. Not trusting that world,
Ruchika had clung to an old keypad phone with a
cracked screen, but now she has no choice. Back at home,
she fumbles with the new phone, struggling with its touch
screen and swipes. Somehow, she launches Skype. They can see her,

(19:38):
but all Ruchika sees is a red and navy logo
with three golden lions in the center, the CBI's official crest.
In the tiny print below the lions, It says sat
Yameva Jayate. Truth alone triumphs the voice on the other
side begins to interrogate her. Six Govind Daradun to a

(20:00):
con state. In mid twenty twenty four, Govind, the farmer,
and three companions from Gonda board a train that rattles
northwest for fourteen hours to Darradun. Waiting for them is
Robin Kumar, in his mid thirties with a slight limp
and a fast mouth. Robin informs them of their new employer,
a transport company gkg T that's setting up a branch

(20:23):
in the Himalayan city. Their new workplace is a ground
level office with nothing but a plastic signboard, a table
and four chairs. Robin assures them that more equipment laptops
printers will soon arrive, but first he needs Govin's Adhar
card and his mobile phone. Over the next few weeks,
Govind discovers his main job seems to be opening accounts

(20:45):
at local banks. Robin takes him to fill out form
after form opening corporate accounts under his name as gkgt's director.
Back at the office, he waits for bank employees to
drop by to verify that the business is legitimate. When
they come, it's all in English, and Govind has trouble following,
but Robin and the bank staff appear to know each

(21:06):
other and tell him to just keep signing. When mailings
arrive atm cards, passbooks, check books all in Govin's name,
Robin keeps them. Govin doesn't like this, but Robin says,
the company is in your name, but someone else is
investing the money. Obviously they'll keep the account. Plus he
needs control of the accounts to pay their salaries. He says,

(21:29):
as promised, Govind receives twenty thousand rupees a month, plus
room and board. One long weekend. With the banks closed,
Robin rents a car and drives them north for a
pilgrimage to Kedanath, a mountain temple snowed in for half
the year. Govind helps Robin, who struggles with his limp,
up the seventeen kilometer trek to the temple. Robin buys

(21:50):
Govind an amulet of three rude raksha seeds, beat it
onto a crimson string. They pray to Lord Shiva both
protector and destroyer, then return to Dara Duo for more
rounds of bank account openings. Govind can't shake the feeling
that something is amiss, but Robin and his boss, who
occasionally drops in from out of town, have an answer

(22:10):
for everything. Some accounts aren't working, so that's why they
keep opening new ones, they explain. GKGT is registered under
Govin's name to minimize the company's goods and services tax.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
They say.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Just imagine, Robin tells Govind. Once the business takes off,
you'll get a share of the profits. There's not even
a one percent problem in anything we're doing, Robin says,
pulling up photos on his phone of gkgt's fleet of trucks.
Then about two months in, it's over as quickly as
it started. Robin informs the group that GKGT is having

(22:43):
trouble sorting out the goods and services tax issue, so
they can go home for a month. Govind, flush with
three months salary, returns to Gonda, relieved that his doubts
appear unfounded, and comforted by what Robin told him. Don't worry,
We'll set you up for life. Seven Ruchika August second,
twenty twenty four. It's Friday, and Ruchika sits in her bedroom, isolated.

(23:08):
Her new phone pings as a document lands in her WhatsApp.
It's water marked with the CBI logo and carries Officer
Gupta's stamp and signature. Consent to terms of digital custody.
This case is classified as a second level confidential case
by the state. Any One who leaks the secret will
be sentenced for three to five years in prison. On

(23:29):
it is printed her confidential ADHAR number. Another ping, This
time it's a list of seventy surveillance rules. The suspect
must not alter her appearance. The suspect must not communicate
with unauthorized individuals. The suspect must provide updates on her activities.
Suspect suspect, suspect the word jars her. It's early evening

(23:52):
now and Inspector Kana pops onto Skype. Unlike Gupta, Kana
seems sympathetic. He reassures her that if she's innocent, this
will all over, but she needs to cooperate. He speaks
in English fluently. He begins asking questions the kind you
hear in a psychological test. What is your biggest fear,
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment? How do you

(24:13):
deal with failure? This goes on for hours until two
a m. He asks about five hundred questions. In all,
the most rational mind will bend under stress. Isolation and
confinement can cloud judgment. Relentless surveillance can impair cognitive functioning.
Under prolonged interrogation, people do something that in retrospect makes

(24:35):
no sense. They give false confessions. Ruchika, under all these stressors,
doesn't find it odd that VJ. Khana is almost comically
fitting a name that generations of older Indians associate with
the swashbuckling police inspector played by Bollywood great Amita Butchan.
When Kana says he can't show Ruchika his face on

(24:55):
Skype because he's an intelligence officer, she believes him. By
the time Kana breaks for the night, he knows Ruchika's
fears and desires her strengths and weaknesses. A night duty
officer comes online, Ruchika will remember her voice, the only
female one she'll hear on Skype. The officer doesn't say
much As Ruchika cries herself to sleep, the Little Black

(25:18):
Eye watches her. Ruchika wakes the next morning. It's Friday,
only twenty four hours since the first phone call. She's
instructed to change into all white, to show respect and
don't cry. Kana says that will exasperate the court. In
her living room, where she sometimes keeps a colorful pile
of teddy bears and other stuffed animals, She's to attend

(25:40):
a virtual hearing presided over by d Y Chandrachud, the
Chief Justice of India. She's told to stand. She hears
a door open and close footsteps a clerk calling the
court to order, the crack of a gavel. Chandrachud's photo
appears on Skype.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Do you know Naresh Guayal.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
The voice from the bench asks, referring to the disgraced
founder of Jet Airways. No, the court has a recording
of you speaking with him. I don't recall. Ruchika says
he may have been a patient. My patients often call
and talk to me. It was about money. An order
comes down afterward upon review of the petition filed by

(26:20):
Ruchika Tandon. The court finds that the funds in question
remain unverified. All of Ruchika's assets must be scrutinized by
the CBI for links to illegal activities. The court order says,
as a precaution, her funds must be pledged to the court,
all of them fixed deposits, mutual funds, even her retirement fund.
She is to transfer them to a government administered secret

(26:43):
supervision account. If Ruchika doesn't comply, the order, says, an
arrest warrant will be issued immediately. Eight the economic divide Mumbai,
Maharashtra State. In twenty twenty two, the unemployment rate among
young college graduates in India was twenty nine percent, nearly

(27:03):
nine times higher than the rate among illiterate workers. According
to the International Labor Organization, many young people can't find
work that matches their skills and aspirations. For the scam industry,
that's become something to exploit. Chetan Cocaret's story is a
case study. In Mumbai, two worlds face off across a
patch of blue sea. On one side is a strip

(27:25):
of luxury bungalows and glass towers known as Billionaire's Row.
On the other side lies Gheta Nagar, a slum lined
with plastic jerry cans, where, on average, ten residents share
a community tap that comes alive for forty five minutes
on a good day. Chetan grew up in room number
one forty seven of Gheta Nagar, with his two brothers,

(27:47):
mother and father. His mother was a housemaid, his father
a driver. Their forty five dollars a month room twelve
by five feet, had one queen size bed, a clock,
and a calendar. It had no no shower, no toilet,
no tap. A plywood board wedged under the door blocked
the entry of rats. Across the bay from Chetan's room

(28:09):
was a twenty seventh floor residence staggered like a Jenga
tower that belonged to Mukesh Umbani. Named Antilia, after a
mythical Atlantic island. It had a staff of six hundred, helipads, gardens, pools,
an ice cream parlor, a six floor garage, and a
room with walls that emitted artificial snowflakes. Chetan was eighteen

(28:30):
when Ambani launched Geo, unleashing a digital revolution. As the
eldest son, Chetan worked to bolster his job prospects and
improve his family's fortunes. He earned a commerce degree and
an online MBA, and took certification courses in taxation and
data processing. He learned English, the language of social mobility.

(28:51):
He got jobs, including one in sales with Geo, but
it wasn't enough. The jobs offered no career growth, and
even GEO, which means to live, never paid more than
one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Dollars a month.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Then one day, an acquaintance of his father said he
could place Cheitan in a job in Cambodia that would
pay seven hundred to eight hundred dollars a month, but
the family would have to front forty five hundred dollars
in fees to get him there. Desperate, they took out loans.
In June twenty twenty four, Chetan flew to sim Reap
with a letter assuring him of a managerial job. Upon arrival,

(29:26):
he was driven to a five story building in Poipet,
a city on the Cambodia Thai border, where his passport
was taken and he was handed a three page script
to memorize. His new job was to manage line one
of a scam operation ten am to six pm, seven
days a week. Each day, an automated system would dial
for Chitan the numbers of about one hundred Indians and

(29:48):
play a pre recorded message to know more about the
status of your undelivered FedEx package Press one. When someone
answered Chetan posing as FedEx employee Raj Kumar Rao set
a parcel link to their Adhar card containing drugs, had
been intercepted by customs and was now in police custody.
Then he forwarded the call to Line two, a room

(30:10):
replicating an Indian police station, complete with Mahatma Gandhi's portrait,
the buzz of walkie talkies, and a Pakistani man in
uniform who placed the person under digital arrest. Line three
was manned by someone posing as a finance official, who
directed the victims to transfer their money to India's central bank.
Line four worked in the background, arranging bank accounts and

(30:32):
overseeing transfers and withdrawals. Chetan's center, run by a Chinese boss,
was staffed by people from India, Cambodia, Nepal and Pakistan.
When Chatan botched a call, he was forced to stand
for twenty four hours or write the script fifty times.
For every successful scam, he received a one percent to
two percent commission. He was promoted to Line two, bought

(30:55):
the latest iPhone, and sent money home. After five months,
Chetan and other line workers confronted the center's managers, retrieved
their passports and left. Chetan returned home in late November.
Ten days later, police showed up in Ghita Nagar and
arrested him for thirty seconds of one victim's twelve day
digital arrest. The skype id used had been Chetan's. In April.

(31:20):
Out on bail, he sits in his home wearing track
pants and a black Batman T shirt. If convicted, he
could face life imprisonment. We have nothing now, he tells
a Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter when she visits. I have to
start from zero nine Priya. In early July twenty twenty four,

(31:41):
Priya and Bolesh pose for photos at the Hills and
Horizon Resort in Nepal, relaxing on lounge chairs by the pool,
sipping dranks at the billiard bar, stealing a kiss beneath
the outdoor gazebo.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Over the last.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Eighteen months, Priya has played the part of a young
Indian wife fasting during sabitri brata for the long and
healthy life of her husband and donning asari to celebrate
the new rice harvest within laws, but tensions are building
in the marriage. When it became apparent that the small
fortune she'd sent for the crypto investment wasn't coming back,

(32:14):
that she'd been scammed, she filed a police report to
no avail. Her mother in law keeps needling her about
the laws. Her family insisted she quit her job at
the bank so they could keep watch over her. Trapped
at home, Priya is forbidden by Bolesh from trading on
her phone, but Priya is hooked. She's joined more than
forty telegram groups and has built a network of contacts

(32:37):
who take Indian rupees and exchange them online for Tether,
a cryptocurrency pegged to the U. S.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Dollar. Tether is both stable.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
And anonymous, making it a favorite of criminals around the world.
She begins to work with a group of university boys
in lucknow known for running their trades during class one.
Ayushiadav nicknames her p to p Auntie in his contacts,
a nod to decentralized peer to peer exchanges where people
trade crypto anonymously without a middleman. Bolesh pleads with Priya

(33:08):
to stop this work makes him uneasy. He's a simple
man from a simple family with simple tastes. When he
brings up the money lost to the scam, Priya snaps,
it happened just once. How many times are you going
to keep bringing it up? She isn't the kind to
self flagellate. Her Facebook remains full of pick me ups,
like by loving yourself, you're going to be a happy person.

(33:30):
Who knows where this money is coming from? Bolesh warns
her it may come from a bad source. She ignores
his pleas When the couple returns from their road trip
in mid July, Priya resumes chatting with Ayoush on WhatsApp.
Is no work going on today? Ayush asks, no, there's
no money these days, she responds. About a week later,

(33:52):
Ayush pings her one guy is going to run a scam,
He writes, with you, We'll be right back with India's
Digital dream hacked. Welcome back to India's Digital dream Hacked.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Ten. Ruchika.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
August third, twenty twenty four. Ruchika clutches the stick shift
of her aging hatchback her mother beside her. After yesterday's
court order, Conna learned that a good chunk of Ruchika's
assets were held in joint accounts with her mother. That
meant the mother had to co sign on any withdrawals,
so Conna let her know her daughter was in trouble

(34:31):
and that she had to cooperate. This is a matter
of how the next twenty thirty years of your daughter's
life are going to be Conna told her. Ruchika must
transfer all her assets to the secret government account by
four pm today. The court said. Their first stop is
a State Bank of India branch. Ruchika receives instructions on
WhatsApp as she arrives. She's to provide updates to her

(34:54):
handlers every five minutes. Her phone pings as the details
of the first secret account land. Remember to request real
time Gross Settlement RTGs, a system used to transfer large
sums of money instantly, the handlers say. The women are
ushered to the office of the branch manager, Narren Kartiki.
He remembers Ruchika from earlier visits, reserved in earnest with

(35:16):
the habit of bobbing her head when speaking. He offers
them tea as he looks over the request. The women
want to clear out their entire balance eleven point seven
million rupees more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
It's a large amount for India, even for an established doctor.
That's because it's not just Ruchika's money, it's a nest

(35:37):
egg built across three generations, beginning with her grandfather, born
in the nineteen twenties when India.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Was still a part of the British Raj.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
A government employee, he'd saved enough through India's four decade
experiment with the planned economy to build a middle class life.
Ruchika's father built on that as a civil engineer, squirreling
away savings during India's tumultuous post independence history, including wars
with Pakistan, food shortages, and Indira Gandhi's two year rule
by decree. As Ruchika's mother aged, the nest egg fattened

(36:09):
a little more thanks to a modest pension. In all,
Ruchika's family has saved some twenty five million rupees or
about three hundred thousand dollars. May I ask, what are
you planning to do with this money? Kartiki asked Ruchika.
She's prepared for the question. The handlers told her to
say she was buying property, But Kartiki asks more questions.

(36:31):
Where is this property? Do you really want to use
all your liquid assets? Might you consider a home loan?
Ruchika hates to lie, but her mind is spinning. She
had asked Kana who her accuser was who had named
her as a suspect, and he'd told her it might
be a coworker at your hospital, or a patient, or
maybe someone inside your bank. Kartiki is also troubled. Ruchika

(36:55):
always came across as reticent, but today she seems afraid,
and he recalls the funny old keypad phone she used
to carry. Now she has a smartphone and keeps glancing
at it as though someone were on the line. He
thinks to himself, if this were a male client, Kardiki
would press more, but Indian morees make it uncomfortable for
him to pry into the affairs of two women. Ruchika

(37:19):
is a senior faculty member of the hospital, not the
type to grill. He processes the request. Ruchika still has
time to make a run across town to the next bank.
By day's end, fourteen point five million rupees of the
Tandun family nest egg have been whisked away, landing in
three separate accounts, including two opened just weeks earlier in

(37:40):
the Himalayan town of Derradun registered to a transport company
g K G T eleven Rishikesh, Sitamari, Bihar State. The
same day Ruchika stands up in her look now living
room for a court hearing. A group of young men
check into the Hotel Citoyan in Sitamari, chaotic border town

(38:01):
in Bihar State, Abudding, Nepal. The four story building is
like thousands cropping up in India's hinterland, a mishmash of
new amenities and creaking infrastructure slapped together to keep pace
with the country's rapid modernization. An open fuse box in
the stairwell bursts with electrical wires. Ceiling panels are missing
in the hallways and guest rooms on one side look

(38:23):
out at two white porcelain toilets that somehow made their
way onto the tin roof of the building next door.
The Hotel Citayan is also kitted with flat panel TVs,
air conditioners and more important, stable Wi Fi for Sitamari
its top notch. The men take two rooms at the
far end of the first floor, order chicken thighs and

(38:45):
half liter bottles of alcohol, and settle in for the job.
Rishikesh Kumar, a Ganja smoking twenty five year old, takes
a room to himself and sets up his laptop. Eight
months earlier, he'd responded to a post on a telegram
group of about ten thousand people that served as a
kind of marketplace for Indian bank accounts. It coursed with

(39:05):
ads seeking to borrow accounts, preferably corporate ones with large
transaction limits for two to four days. In return, the
account holder gets one percent to two percent of whatever
funds flow through. One such ad shows bricks of cash
covering a bed set against the track of Paisa or money,
a rap about being as rich as Bezos, Gates and Musk.

(39:27):
Rishikesh is resourceful. As a sixteen year old, he'd started
in Adhar Kiosk, much like Baratz in Jalandhar, and got
to know others doing similar work. When he saw the
telegram ads, he tapped into that network. One former Kiosk
owner lined up a contact who promised to provide a
corporate account. Rishikesh and the man connected and struck a deal,

(39:49):
leading him here. Overseeing this operation remotely is gopal Kumar,
in his late twenties, who grew up in a small,
dusty Bihari town called bar He's no real to Rishikesh.
As a child, Gopaul was precocious, good at math, a bookworm,
the only one in his family to read newspapers in English.

(40:09):
In his late teens, he became his family's best shot
at a stable, middle class life, clearing the competitive Indian
Navy entrance exam, but over the years he'd strayed. According
to two family members, he quietly took leave from the Navy,
snubbed a request from his older brother to meet a
potential bride, and fell in with company that was a
bit four twenty as in section four twenty of the

(40:33):
Indian Penal Code, cheating, Gopaul evolved into a potty mouthed,
fast talker and a mentor of sorts in the shady
world of loaned bank accounts. In one phone tapped conversation,
a person identified by police as Go Paul coaches a
rookie Voice one, I have a piece of.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Bad news, Go Paul, what happened? Voice one? Account has
been frozen? Go Paul.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Sister eff asked what to do. Gopaul instructs the rookie
on how to bully and motivate the account holder. You
tell him what sort of account did.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
You give me?

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Then, at the conversation's end, he agrees to handle the
matter himself in return for two hundred and tether and.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
A new smartphone.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Gopaul's operation relies on months of preparation, dozens of people
across India, and technological and financial mastery. Weeks earlier, in
Darra Doon, Robin had covertly installed an app on Govin's
phone that automatically forwarded one time passwords from his bank accounts. Now,
Gopaul preps Rishikesh with an illicit software called Panel, with

(41:37):
which he's able to manage both those hundreds of one
time passwords and all the bank accounts on loan. Although remote,
go paul Is hands on call records show the day
the group checked in, he spoke with them twenty five
times over six hours. Some teams in this underworld lose
their proceeds because of glitchy software or an unstable Internet connection.

(41:59):
In one digital arrest case, more than five billion rupees
got stuck in a dead man's account, not go Pall's team.
The next day, five point ninety four million rupees from
the Tandon family nest Egg lands in one of Govin's
GKGT company accounts in Dearra Doon. Govind himself is hundreds
of kilometers away, according to call records, unaware of the

(42:21):
activity in his account. As Rishikesh monitors panel, the software
executes more than seven hundred transactions in seconds, redistributing the
money in real time to dozens of pre registered beneficiaries.
Account records show with each passing hour, Ruchika's money becomes,
for all practical purposes, irretrievable, traveling through layer upon layer

(42:44):
of accounts, dispersing into the ether. Twelve Ruchika, August fourth,
twenty twenty four. It's Sunday, three days since the first
phone call, and Ruchika is exhausted. She's been closing out
her deposits, investment policies, and retirement accounts, running from one
bank to the next. It seems her handlers are always

(43:05):
waiting for a notary to sign off on one document
or another. She can hear them typing over Skype, slowing
everything down. She keeps wondering why would someone accuse her?
What reason would anyone have to resent her? She's not rich,
she doesn't wear fancy jewelry. She drives an aging Maruti
Suzuki with vinyl seats. Why is this happening to her?

(43:29):
At times? Kna, the police inspector, gets fed up with
her tears and questions, but other times he softens and
calls her sister, promising to help fast track her bail application.
He's the only one who seems to believe her. They've
been speaking for hours and hours under different circumstances, long
enough perhaps for a budding friendship, and at times he

(43:50):
seems concerned for her well being, for her future. Ruchika
hears her son leave the house for a dance recitle
she was supposed to perform, playing the guitar, but ConA
won't let her go. He can see she's upset. He
suggests she play the songs anyway at home. Now, Ruchika
strums through the four songs she was supposed to perform.

(44:12):
When she gets to give Me Some Sunshine from the
two thousand and nine Bollywood blockbuster Three Idiots, Cona's voice
cries out on Skype, joining hers, give me some sunshine,
give me some rain, give me another chance. I want
to grow up once again. He's off tune, absolutely terrible.
Ruchika tries not to giggle. Momentarily, her tears dry. Thirteen scamdemic.

(44:40):
As early as twenty twenty two, Chinese students in Ireland
and Germany were receiving calls from fraudsters posing as Chinese cops,
telling them they'd been implicated in a criminal case and
instructing them to post bail to avoid arrest. By twenty
twenty four, US colleges were flagging a warning from the
FBI about the tactic. Similar alerts sounded in Japan and Thailand.

(45:04):
The scam percolated, then petered out. In India, it morphed
into an epidemic. Some forty thousand cases were reported in
twenty twenty two, sixty thousand the next, then nearly one
hundred twenty four thousand twenty twenty four. As of February
this year, Indian citizens had lost twenty six billion rupees

(45:25):
in digital arrests. As the scam is called, cybercrime has
gone from a distant threat to a pervasive, everyday reality,
the government's main policy think tank, nietzsche Aug said in April.
Cybersecurity lapses have also exposed voter id numbers, health records,
even the biometrics of police officers. Digital arrests draw on

(45:46):
an understanding of human psychology and cultural norms to lure
and manipulate targets. Although complex and time consuming to run,
the payoff can be great wiping out high value victims.
Teams often trace back to pockets of Southeast Asia, where
Chinese crime syndicates perfect customize and industrialized scams, then export

(46:08):
them to the world. The Jet Airways script emerged within
weeks of the founder Gouyal's arrest. Similar scripts have ripped
off of headline capturing investigations involving the husband of a
Bollywood actress and the former CEO of Icici Bank. The
victims include doctors, a former Central bank staffer, retired army officers,

(46:28):
business executives, even a monk who lost twenty five million
rupees of his Ashram's money in a digital arrest that
lasted twenty five days. Some targets, unlike Ruchika, received a
visual production. They could see the people on the other
side of Skype. They watched uniformed officers in busy police stations,
where in the background sub inspectors could be heard recording statements.

(46:52):
These scammers turned actors were versed in law enforcements, mannerisms,
and language, quoting sections of the Indian penal code. Sometimes
they already knew victim's Adhar numbers or had a copy
of their bank ATM card. In one case, a thirty
three year old woman had her own voice played back
to her, seemingly in conversation with.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Jet Airways Goyal.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Ruchika received a document labeled WRIT Petition Criminal Number one
eighty eight of twenty twenty four. Three weeks later, an
eighty two year old textile industrialist S. P. Oswal received
the exact same document. Oswald II was told he'd been
implicated in the Jet Airways case. The officer, again named VJ. Khana,

(47:35):
promised to help clear Oswald if he agreed to digital custody.
Oswald agreed, putting himself under surveillance. He attended a hearing
on Skype with someone claiming to be Justice Chandrachud. Then
he sent eight hundred and forty thousand dollars to a
secret supervision account. The intellectual property needed to mount such
scams as freely shared in one online library. BusinessWeek found

(47:59):
anonymous users who posted dozens of files, including an Excel
spreadsheet with thousands of Adhar numbers, verbatim scripts for callers,
and a sample CBI freezing order. Other spreadsheets leaked details
on thousands of Indian doctors VIP frequent flyers of a
major Indian airline and taxpayers who declared high incomes last year.

(48:20):
One included Ruchika, her name, title, and phone number. All
these templates can be viewed and downloaded for nine dollars
and ninety nine cents fourteen Ruchika. August sixth, twenty twenty four. Ruchika,
in her living room, stands for her third court hearing.
This time, she's remembered to wear all white without being told.

(48:44):
She pleads for one last extension until four pm to
transfer what remains of her assets. She has three banks
to get to and it's already close to noon. When
the hearing ends, she grabs her car keys and rushes
for the door. Her first stop is only about ten
kilometers away, but look now, as traffic can be hellish.
Even while driving, she has to make sure Kana can

(49:05):
see her. She keeps glancing to check the position of
her phone. By the time she sees the bus, it's
too late. She hears a bang as it clips her
side mirror. An idol of Lakshmi hanging above the dashboard
swings from the impact. Coana keeps pressing her to finish
by four pm or she won't get bail. But when
she arrives at one bank, it's closed for lunch. At

(49:27):
the next one, she has to wait. Conna instructs her
to be pushier, go and stand there. Ask them again.
Since the ordeal began, Ruchika has been forced to act
like someone she isn't, lying, concealing, and now nagging. She
arrives at her last stop, Kenara Bank, with only minutes
to spare. Coana texts to say she should hang tight

(49:49):
for details on where to send the money, followed by
a smiley face emoji. Okay sir waiting The bank is
about to close, she texts back. He drops the details
the final transfer into the chat. The bank sends Ruchika's
last two hundred thousand rupees to an account opened the
previous week by a teen in another state. Within twenty

(50:10):
four hours, he will withdraw the entire amount from ATMs
and with a self drawn check fifteen Priya. Priya is
busy hustling with her tether boys. Her job is to
help convert Indian rupees into cryptocurrency without leaving any fingerprints
on any accounts that can be traced. She asks Ayush

(50:30):
and his friends to line up mule accounts after they'd
first connected over telegram, she'd instructed the money that will
come to you is fraud money, so don't take it
in your account. Take the money in someone else's account
number and withdraw it immediately, otherwise that account will be frozen.
According to a statement Ayush will later give to authorities,
Ayush works carefully arranging accounts and saving the details in

(50:54):
his mobile phone. When it's time for a deal, Priya
arranges for rupees to be deposited.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
In an account.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
As soon as the money lands, Ayush converts it into
tether on Binance's peer to peer marketplace and sends the
crypto to an address given to him by Priya. He
makes a profit thanks to the difference in price at
which he buys the tether on Binance and sells it
to Priya. Gopal's gang pays Priya a commission of three
thousand to five thousand rupees for every one hundred thousand

(51:21):
rupees she helps convert into tether. According to police, one
member of Ayousha's group will tell the police that he
converted about ten million rupees for Priya in this way.
Over WhatsApp, Priya presses Ayush quickly quickly, Baba quickly or
please get this one cleared, empty it soon. At one point,
Priya tells Ayush that an account with a million dollars

(51:44):
has been frozen. It's difficult now, she texts. But on
August fifth, things appear to go smoothly as Ruchika sends
out five point five million rupees, one of her single
largest transfers. The money gets dispersed across more than a
dozen accounts. Actually, two hundred and five thousand, seven hundred
and seventy nine rupees land in one arranged by Ayush.

(52:06):
Release it quickly, prea texts. Within minutes, he sends her
confirmation of a trade two hundred three thousand, two hundred
and sixty eight rupees converted into tether sixteen Ruchika. August ninth,
twenty twenty four, On Friday, eight days after the first call,
Ruchika is released from digital custody. The court has pledged

(52:27):
her funds will be returned if found clean. Ruchika returns
immediately to work at the hospital, where her number of
patients can exceed one hundred. Before she knows it, the
day is over. The following day, she takes a breather.
No banks to visit, no sense of urgency, finally some
time to think. She stares at Google, hesitating. She wants

(52:49):
to understand how the CBI investigates cases. Should she search?
Are they still monitoring her? She isn't doing anything wrong
by googling?

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Is she?

Speaker 1 (52:59):
She starts typing CBI Rahul Gupta Digital Custody up pop
news stories about cybercrime. She clicks one and starts reading.
It's about another Indian doctor conned out of millions of
rupees by men posing as fake officials. Ruchika still believes
the officials she spoke to were real, but maybe she

(53:21):
thinks she should verify. She goes to a police station
when the duty officer immediately asks if she's transferred any money.
Ruchika's too embarrassed to answer. She's referred to Lucknow's Cybercrime
Police Unit, which at nine thirty nine pm formally lodges
her complaint. The police catalog her transfers over the previous week,

(53:42):
tallying how much was lost more than twenty four million rupees,
almost everything she and her family had. Seventeen the cops
Lucknow Inspector Brigheshiadov, who is in charge of Lucknow's Cybercrime
Police station, opens a case to On August tenth, the
day of Ruchika's police complaint, he requests freezes on seven

(54:05):
accounts at six banks, but he suspects that by now
her money has moved on, traveling through two three layers.
It used to be police could recover most of the
victim's stolen money because it went to only a few
accounts and was withdrawn slowly in cash from ATMs, but
no more. Yadav's case diary records him asking one bank

(54:26):
after another for help. Once he gets a reply, he
starts over examining another layer of accounts at another set
of banks. The scammers sent hundreds of small instant payments
to cover their tracks. Scams have become so pervasive in
India that the central government has established a dedicated cybercrime
agency to coordinate across states and law enforcement units. It

(54:47):
works with banks to freeze funds faster before they're siphoned
off by fraudsters, but scammers keep flooding the system. One
even tried duping one of India's most famous cops, ahmetab Yash.
I understood then, why people fall for it? Yash marveling
at the sophistication in mimicry tells BusinessWeek they are incredibly convincing.

(55:08):
Ruchika's case is so complicated that the State's Special Task Force,
a unit of elite investigators, is brought in. Leading the
team is Deepak Singh, Deputy Superintendent of State Police. By
using mobile numbers linked to bank accounts, his team gets
onto the Tetherboys, then follows the money trail to Priya
and to Gopaul, the former Navy member turned Underworld operator.

(55:30):
Singh's team surreptitiously installs software on the phone of Gopaul's girlfriend.
It forwards them a text message about a hotel reservation.
The couple are planning a rendezvous. The task force stakes
out under a dusty overpass, tiny cameras embedded into plane,
closed vests and motorcycle helmets. Soon enough, Gopaul emerges from
the hotel. When he's arrested, police say he has one

(55:52):
hundred and forty five thousand, four hundred rupees in cash.
The money was defrauded from a doctor Madam at a
Lucknow hospital, Opal would later tell police. According to his
written statement. In Ruchika's case, the Special Task Force conducts
one of its most extensive probes yet into a digital arrest.
Within twenty days, police round.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Up six suspects.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
By late September, they arrest eighteen, but then the chain breaks.
IP addresses linked to Ruchika's scammers are traced to Cambodia.
Interrogations reveal a mysterious mastermind Jack who lives overseas. Once
the trail leads off shore, the police know it disappears,
just as Ruchika's money did. Eighteen Govind Govind sits cross

(56:37):
legged on a wooden divan, his back against sacks of
unholed rice, remembering the day.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
His worst fears came true.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
It was in August last year, soon after he'd returned
from Dero Doun and was ensconced back into village life
as he helped with preparations for a festival Kajari Tij.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
His phone rang.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
The cyber crime police station in Lucknow was summoning him
for questioning. His two friends, who'd accompanied him to Dara
Dun advised him to hide, but eventually the police showed
up and took them all to Lucknow, where Govind learned
that millions of stolen rupees had coursed through an account
in his name. He told police all he knew, helping
lead to Robin's arrest, but the ordeal has broken him. Depressed,

(57:19):
he mostly stays home. He struggles with a sense of betrayal,
still wearing the amulet Robin gave him in Kedarnath. In April,
Govin thinks the nightmare may finally be ending. He's cleared
his name and is trying to piece his life back
together with the help of his wife and bright eyed
young daughter. But in May, Govin gets a letter from
police in Delhi summoning him for questioning. Then he gets

(57:42):
another from police in Bngaloou. Then by September, four more
accounts in his name have been used in scams across
the country. All Govind wanted was a job, and he
lost everything by simply showing up for one. Nineteen Rishikesh
Shrikandi Bita, Bihar State. In late May two business week,

(58:04):
reporters wind their way through the tiny lanes of Shikandi Bita,
a village in northern Bihar State.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Police describe the.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Region as no man's land. If a person wants to abscond,
they can run two hundred meters across open pastures and
disappear into Nepal. But it feels idyllic, like a hamlet
that's eluded India's urban encroachment. Children play by thatched fences
and fruit trees. Wooden basins line the lanes with drinking
water for livestock. The air is clean, the surrounding fields

(58:34):
green and lush. We approach a two story brick house
painted peach, nicer than most in the village, and knock
is Rishikesh. Here can we speak to him? Rishikesh's mother,
her sorry veil pulled over her head, asks us to
remove our shoes, and shows us to a sitting room
with a cheap chandelier, bare cement floors, and a staircase

(58:55):
leading to the second floor. A young man bearded in
navy track pants sends and gazes at us. We recognize
his gray jersey with a front pocket that says gravity.
It's the same one he was wearing in a photo
shown to us by police, where he's sitting on a
hotel bed with a laptop and joint, a cloud of
smoke enveloping his head.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
He knows we're reporters.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
And why we've come so we can talk to you freely,
we ask as.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
We start our recorders.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
He shrugs, han sure, why not. He sits in a
plastic chair, back straight and starts to speak with bewildering candor.
There were many people involved. He tells us they'd connected
through telegram, He'd lined up one of the principal mule
accounts through his adhar Kiosk contacts. He'd installed the software.

(59:42):
Go Paul, who sent him the software, was the leader,
and so on. His mother interjects at times, afraid he'll
incriminate himself, but he ignores her. He's not worried. He
says he didn't know some one was being scammed. He
was told the money came from gaming profits. Could the
police prove otherwise. Rishikesh claims to have never met Go

(01:00:02):
Paul until they ended up in the same jail. We
pull out a screenshot from a video call of the two.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Of them speaking. He gets a bit agitated.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yes, they might have spoken on telegram once after the
job was done.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
What was Go Paul like? We ask?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Did he show any remorse in jail? He never says
sorry to anyone, Rishikesh says. Rishikesh soon tires of the
questions and begins to yawn. He plays with his shiny
silver white smartphone. He slouches in his chair. We begin
to ask if he knew anything about Jack, the alleged
mastermind overseas. Rishikesh decides he's had enough. He gets up

(01:00:39):
and returns upstairs. Priya Lucknow July twenty twenty five. In
late July, the District in Sessions Court in Lucknow holds
a proceeding for the accused in Ruchika's case. It's been
nearly a year since her ordeal, and Ruchika has clawed
back only six percent of the twenty four million rupees
that were stolen. Some accounts have been frozen, with money

(01:01:01):
remaining in them. She needs a court order to get
the funds released to her, but each account has multiple
victims making similar claims. Ruchika now finds it hard to
trust anyone. She panics it calls from unknown numbers. Something
as innocuous as an odd question from a patient can
put her on alert. I was a very free person,

(01:01:21):
she says, but now I am not a free person.
The main suspects are out on bail. As the case
makes its way through the morass of India's judicial system,
it could be years before there's any resolution. Go Paul
hasn't shown up for the proceeding, but he's agreed to
an interview by phone. Contradicting the statement police say he

(01:01:41):
made when arrested, Go Paul denies everything. He's never heard
of Ruchika, He's been framed, he knows nothing about a scam,
and police didn't even recover a rupee from him. He
threatens to sue Bloomberg, the Special Task Force, and Ruchika
for defamation. One of the accused does appear. She has
put on coal lipstick and a yellow Kurta tunic. As

(01:02:04):
she orders a lassie from a stand outside the court house.
A Business Week reporter approaches her. Are you Haarpriya? Her
voice is high pitched and slightly nasal. Police say Ruchika
identified it as the female duty officer from Skype. Priya
was released on bail in Lucknow in December, then immediately
transported twelve hundred kilometers south to another jail in Nashik

(01:02:27):
to face charges in a separate digital arrest case. In
mid July, after being released a second time, she posted
on Facebook embrace your flaws hashtag self loved. When Priya
realizes who she's speaking to, she launches into a diatribe.
No one knew she was in jail until two business
week reporters showed up at her house in Odisha. It

(01:02:48):
was their fault that her husband was now seeking a divorce.
She's reminded that months before the journalists appeared, two police
cars with sirens had shown up at her home at
noon and taken her away. She ignores that and carries
on the police have framed her. They have no proof.
No money went into her account. She has no money
to hire a lawyer. How will she get another job

(01:03:10):
because of the journalists. This divorce will ruin her. Everything
is over now, everything is finished. She says, you don't
know how it is in the place I live.