New Delhi, February 9 The use of Artificial Intelligence in tackling mule accounts, which form a key element in facilitating the laundering of illicit funds stolen through cyber crimes, will be one of the focus areas of the two-day conference organized by the CBI and the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the Union Home Ministry, which begins on Tuesday, officials said.
The CBI and I4C have organized a two-day conference titled "Tackling Cyber-Enabled Frauds & Dismantling the Ecosystem" from Tuesday to develop a coordinated strategy to dismantle the infrastructure behind organized cyber crimes.
The agency will also unveil its new cyber crime branch, inaugurated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will also inaugurate the conference and the I4C's S4C Dashboard, belonging to the MHA.
The two-day conference will feature detailed sessions on the three pillars of the framework to counter cyber fraud: financial systems, telecommunications infrastructure, and human exploitation, which form the backbone of organized cyber crime gangs.
"The conference is being convened at a time when, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India's rapid digital transformation has significantly improved access to banking, governance, and communication, while simultaneously creating new vulnerabilities that are being exploited by organized cybercriminal networks," a government statement said.
Senior officers from the CBI, Interpol, the Enforcement Directorate, I4C, and other agencies, cyber security experts, and lawyers will discuss addressing the rising magnitude of transnational cyber crime, including the role of "Artificial Intelligence" in laundering proceeds through mule account networks and the misuse of eSIM and VoIP technologies to facilitate anonymity in fraud operations.
Officials and experts from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the Department of Financial Services (DFS), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), banks, FinTech Companies, and Payment Platforms, Telecom Service Providers, Social Media and Cloud Service Intermediaries will also be part of the conference.
The conference will also highlight the "cyber slavery" pillar, exposing the recruitment of individuals into forced scam compounds, and will explore international cooperation through Interpol and the UN Cybercrime Convention.
The officials will discuss national-level trends in cyber crime, ponder the scale and complexity of cyber frauds, and examine systemic vulnerabilities in telecom infrastructure, the misuse of SIMs, eSIMs, VoIP systems, and SIM boxes in OTP interception, and cross-border fraud, among others.
The sessions aim to establish actionable priorities for law enforcement, focusing on state-level investigation models and enhanced coordination with social media intermediaries to curb future trafficking and financial crimes, officials said.
The scam compounds operating as organized criminal infrastructure, cyber slavery, where victims are lured in the name of lucrative job offers and forced into committing cyber crimes, the use of formal legal instruments like the UN Cybercrime Convention and MLAT frameworks shall also be deliberated upon during the conference.
"The CBI has been investigating cyber crime since 2000 and has upgraded its capabilities by establishing the Cybercrime Investigation Division in 2022. It serves as the nodal agency for investigating cyber crime affecting the Central Government and its offices, handling both cyber-dependent crimes and cyber-enabled frauds," the statement said.
The deliberations will also focus on strengthening inter-agency and public-private collaboration among law enforcement, banks, telecom providers, regulators, and technology platforms, besides exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence and data analytics to scale investigations with limited manpower; improve mechanisms for faster fraud reporting, real-time fund tracing, timely evidence preservation, and better victim protection.
The conference seeks to drive a unified strategy to combat cyber-enabled fraud by strengthening prevention, investigation, technology adoption, inter-agency coordination, and victim-centric frameworks.