Well, as India connects with the globe, so have its people, in the means to make a quick buck. In the latest instance, a Malta national paid $ 56,000 to an engineer based in India after he falsely promised to marry her. The two got in touch while chatting on Internet in 2002. It took Ratwana just a few months to convince the woman that he was a nice guy and that she could spend the rest of her life with him.

Accused Devender Ram Ratwana (32), who works with Reliance Infocomm, even went to Malta and spent a month there with the 40-year-old woman, all at her expense of course. Ratwana was arrested by the economic offences wing (EOW) of Delhi Police last week. Apart from cheating, a case of rape has also been registered against him. The victim has said that Ratwana got her pregnant during his stay in Malta.

Indeed, such is the nature of cyber crime and its myriad permutations that sometimes it borders on the bizarre. Take another case where the perpetrator of the crime is from a port city in India while the victim resides in the US. Kenneth Corley, who lives in New Mexico, met a girl from Delhi on the Internet and fell in love with her, and wanted to marry her. The girl, known to him as Anita, sent him her photograph and promised to fly down to the US. He wired her $1,400 towards traveling expenses.

But she never came. Neither was there any message from her. Desperate, Corley sought help from the Delhi Police to track her down. The police realized the American had been cheated when the photo he turned over was that of top Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai.

Corley, however, refused to believe he had been conned by the woman — or "woman," since his email friend could well have been a man — and has, incredibly, wired another $700 to her.

"I still see the eyes in the photo she sent me and relate them to the situation. There is little enough love in this world to be abused, and hearts harden against open caring for each other," Corley said.

The Delhi police's search for 'Aishwarya Rai' led them to a cyber café in the port city of Vishakhapatnam. It turned out to be the case of a man posing as a woman. Indeed, cyber crimes are turning innovative by the day. Experts from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation have been training senior Indian police officials from different parts of the country in cyber crime and crisis management.

That cyber crime is on the rise in India is proved by the findings a recent study, Project India Cracked, which reveals that, between February 2002 and December 2004, government and corporate Web sites in the country were hacked more than 1,000 times. Still, many cases go unreported.

Analysts say that the biggest problem in dealing with cyber crime is that there are no uniform laws across the world. Some countries, such as the UK, have cyber crime laws like the Computer Misuse Act that are well implemented. Other territories have laws that have yet to be fully implemented, while some countries are yet to recognize cyber crimes within their judicial system. If there are no relevant laws in the country where the crime originated, no one can be found guilty of breaking them. India has tightened its Information Technology Act that has plugged several loopholes but crimes continue to be perpetrated.

Call centers that provide a window to the external world have had several instances of fraud as well. Earlier this year a group of Indian call center executives sweet talked American customers into letting out what should be a well-kept secret --- codes and passwords for their credit cards and bank accounts. The executives then opened fictitious accounts where money to the tune of half a million dollars were transferred. The plan was executed by former employees and a woman worker of MphasiS, a leading business and process outsourcing (BPO) provider. Former bank employees in the USA were roped in. The money was transferred into fake accounts from cyber cafes in Pune (a BPO hub in Maharashtra), before the police, on complaint by Citibank account holders in USA that was forwarded to Mphasis, swooped in.

In August this year, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) said that employees of a Gurgaon-based call center were illegally selling personal information of thousands of Australians for as little as 10 Australian dollars (less than $ 8) per person. ABC TV claimed that its reporters were offered names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth details, medicare numbers, driver's license numbers, ATM card numbers and even passport information of 1,000 Australians. Earlier in June this year, the British tabloid Sun following a sting operation by one of its reporters claimed that Karan Bahree, an employee of BPO unit Infinity e-Search, divulged personal details of over 1,000 Britons for $5 per head.

The pre-dominant opinion has been that frauds of the kind that have afflicted the Indian BPO industry are quite common, rather rampant internationally. However, given the strong anti-outsourcing voices abroad, it is very important for India to ensure that the services available from here are better than the best and more secure. This is the only way to stamp out competition as well as political opposition of the kind that was witnessed during the run-up to the Presidential elections in the US last year.

According to a US Federal Trade Commission study in 2003, 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the previous five years, including 9.9 million people in 2002 alone. The survey estimates that identity theft losses to businesses and financial institutions totaled to nearly $48 billion and consumer victims reported $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses during 2002.