How A Cigarette In A London Uber Cost This US Man Rs 1 Crore
A US techie was allegedly drugged and robbed of over Rs 1 crore worth of cryptocurrency in London by a man posing as an Uber driver. Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30, a former software engineer from Portland, Oregon, was on a two-day layover in London en route to Spain when the incident occurred.
"I lost $123,000 dollars in crypto and assets," Mr Irwin-Cline told British outlet MyLondon. "They took the majority of my wealth."
It all began around 1:30 am on May 9 after a night out at a Soho nightclub. As he stepped outside, a man called out his name, appearing to match the profile of his booked Uber. Trusting it was his ride, Mr Irwin-Cline sat inside the car without verifying the car model or license plate.
Once inside, the driver offered him a cigarette, which he accepted. Soon after smoking it, he began feeling "really docile" and drowsy, symptoms he suspects were caused by scopolamine, a powerful sedative often used in crimes to make victims compliant.
"There was definitely some sort of drug in the cigarette. I passed out for what I assumed to be 20 to 30 minutes," he recalled.
In a semi-conscious state, he handed over his phone and passwords. He said the driver then dumped him in a "weird part" of London and hit him with the car before speeding off.
"I vaguely remember going through applications a bit. He got a couple of passkeys from me to enter applications," Mr Irwin-Cline said.
The techie left without his phone, and managed to stumble back to his hostel, only to find that his laptop had been remotely wiped and he was locked out of his financial accounts. When he finally regained access, he discovered that his crypto wallets had been emptied.
He reported the incident to British police. So far, no recovery of funds or arrests have been reported.
"It's virtually impossible to get that money back unless some weird miracle happened," Mr Irwin-Cline said.
His case comes amid a rising number of violent crimes targeting cryptocurrency holders around the world.
Three days ago, Italian crypto investor Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan was reportedly kidnapped and tortured in New York City. His alleged captors, including Kentucky crypto investor John Woeltz, demanded access to his Bitcoin holdings.
Mr Carturan was tied to a chair, electrocuted while his feet were in a bucket of water, urinated on, pistol-whipped, and even had his limbs cut with a chainsaw before escaping when the kidnappers were distracted.
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A high NAAC grade can ensure, among other benefits, that an institute attracts a high calibre of students and faculty and also becomes eligible for certain government funds. 'With so many private universities popping up, students often have no way of being sure of institutional quality,' said Ravikant Kisana, an assistant professor at a private university. 'All websites claim research excellence and pedagogical innovation. Students and parents often look to NAAC ratings, since it is from a government agency. A good rating signifies institutional quality and depth.' Thus, Kisana explained, when a college falsely boosts its rates, it may attract students who assume it is better than it is. 'Once admitted, it's difficult to drop out even after discovering the sham, since there is a social stigma of dropping out and starting anew,' he said. While this corruption has long been known in academic circles, it was recently brought into the limelight. In February, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested seven members of a NAAC inspection committee, who were employed in different institutions in the country, including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Davanagere University and Bangalore University. According to a first-information report filed by the agency, members of the committee accepted bribes in exchange for agreeing to provide a favourable grading to the Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation in Andhra Pradesh. The CBI recovered Rs 37 lakh in cash, as well as gold, mobile phones and laptops, across 20 locations. This appeared to be just the tip of the iceberg. In late February, the NAAC removed from duty 900 of the 5,000 assessors it employed because of 'irregularities in their work'. In statements following this move, NAAC officials said that they would be taking measures to curb corruption within the system, but academics are pessimistic about these promises. Sai Balaji, an assistant professor at a private college, questioned the NAAC's decision to simply remove the assessors who were caught indulging in corruption. 'Why were they just removed? Why are they not being prosecuted?' he said. He argued that it was a 'joke' that arrests and investigations were being limited to NAAC assessors. 'We should be looking at the entire organisation,' said Balaji. Scroll emailed the NAAC seeking responses to the cases filed against inspection committee members, and our own findings of corruption in the system. This story will be updated if any responses are received. A boom in competition The NAAC was established in 1994 after the Programme of Action, 1992, a revised version of the National Education Policy, 1986, advocated for the establishment of a body that would independently assess institutes of higher education. It is funded by the University Grants Commission and is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. 'The standards of education in the country were dipping and so NAAC was introduced to ensure that certain standards were maintained by institutions,' said Kisana. The NAAC assessment is voluntary, and institutions can apply for accreditation by uploading their information on the council's portal. Any institution of higher education that has a record of at least two batches of students who have graduated or has been in existence for six years is eligible to apply to be assessed. While assessments began as a method to monitor institutions and ensure they were maintaining prescribed standards of education, academics said that over the years, competition between institutions has steadily increased, which has led to administrations bribing inspection committees and manipulating data. Many linked this to the boom in the number of new institutions over the past two decades. 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'All A, A+ and A++ institutions are categorised at Category 1 and this means that they are prioritised over others when it comes to funds,' Nesan said. It was for these benefits, academics said, that many institutions resorted to unscrupulous measures to secure their grade. Mock inspections All the ten academics that Scroll spoke to said that the months leading up to a NAAC committee visit were usually among the most stressful ones of their professional lives, in which they would be burdened with significant excess work beyond their teaching hours. 'About six months before NAAC is supposed to visit, all the staff were called for a meeting and we were informed about the visit and we were asked to get ready to take on more work,' one professor, who asked to remain anonymous, said of a private university where he was previously employed. The professor said that in the year in which he was part of the process, the institution hired a former NAAC assessor to conduct a mock inspection. 'He went through all our files and data,' he said. 'He point-blank said that there was no way that we were going to get more than a B grade.' But the consultant was not merely tasked with predicting what grade they would get, the professor said. 'He was there to tell us what we could do to change the outcome of the assessment,' he said. For instance, the assessor pointed out that though the institution had good infrastructure, what mattered more was showing better results in terms of faculty research work, an area in which it was severely lacking. Aware that research can sometimes take years to be published, the professor felt that there was nothing the institution could do in the six months that remained before the inspection to change the outcome of the NAAC assessment. But he was in for a surprise. 'The management told us that they would give us the funds for the research but that somehow we needed to try to get published in the next six months,' he said. 'Some teachers took the funds and some didn't. The institution treated the teachers who took the funds very well and looked down on those who didn't.' The professor said that some teachers resorted to paying for their papers to be published. 'There are journals that are not legitimate that publish such papers,' he said. Further, he recalled, the administration now began to display posters on sexual harassment across the campus, in keeping with UGC rules – as mandated, these posters carried details of laws against harassment, and contact details of the internal complaints committee. This was despite the fact that he had worked there for close to a decade, and had not ever seen these posters displayed on the campus before. 'I remember telling the students too that soon after the NAAC visit is done, the posters will disappear,' the professor said. 'And I was right.' Former NAAC assessors and professors also described other kinds of last-minute changes that institutions would make on campus before the team visits, including building ramps and other mandatory infrastructure on campus. E Balagurusamy, a former vice chancellor who has also been a chairman of NAAC committees, recounted that he had noticed institutions buying library books just a few days before the NAAC visit. 'But each time, we cannot always sit and check if all the books have been bought recently or in the past,' he said. Another teacher from a private college said that he was asked to generate false data to show high placements for students who had graduated from the institution. 'We either need the offer letters, salary slips or a copy of the ID cards of the students to prove this. We had neither,' he said. Therefore, he added, faculty were asked to fabricate documents that would show high placements. Often, the teacher explained, the process of inspecting facilities and infrastructure was far from thorough. He recounted that, for instance, the NAAC inspection team would meet faculty in a conference room, select a file at random from those submitted to the council and put questions about data it contained to the faculty member in charge of compiling it. 'All the information is already uploaded on the NAAC site,' the teacher said. 'The team visits so they can physically verify the information that we have uploaded. If they paid attention to what information we were handing to them, they would know that there's something amiss. But they overlook it.' Despite these numerous flaws in the inspection and accreditation process, Kisana said, experience in preparing for NAAC inspections has itself become desirable in faculty during hiring. 'If a candidate mentions in their resume that they have participated in an NAAC inspection and been on the team that compiles data, institutions are keen on hiring them,' he said. How bribery happens A former vice chancellor of a prominent university in Tamil Nadu alleged that during his tenure at the university, he had been approached by a third party seeking bribes for the inspection committee. 'I would get phone calls from people claiming they were a third party who would facilitate with the NAAC team and get us a good rank,' he said. Sometimes, he added, this 'third-party person' would be somebody who worked for the NAAC. He said that peers at other institutions had also complained of being approached by third parties, and that some entertained the demands in the fear that they would be given a low grade if they did not. 'Everybody knows this happens,' he said. Nesan, as a former chairperson on a NAAC team, however, recounted that it was institutions that would seek to bribe the committee members during their visits, before or after inspections. 'Somebody from the institution will come and try to convince me to give the institution a good grade,' he said. In his years of carrying out assessments, Nesan said, around 30% of the time, members of institutions would overtly offer him bribes seeking a higher grade, while about 60% of the time, they would hint that they were open to such means of improving their grade. He recounted that often, institutions would ensure that their offers were not so obvious that any conscientious committee members might penalise them for their actions. Nesan explained that this process could occur through committee members who were more amenable to corruption. On some occasions, he suspected that members of his teams were trying to influence the assessment in favour of institutions. He recounted that he would first notice them fraternising with faculty of the institution during their off-duty hours, and then 'during the discussion, I noticed that they would try to influence the assessment by defending the institution or promoting them'. But, Nesan said, the process largely depended on the head of the inspection committee. 'If the chairperson is sincere and honest, there is no chance of any wrongdoings. Even if the members try to indulge in it,' he said. Even in cases where direct bribery might be difficult to establish, academics said, even the manner in which NAAC teams are treated suggested that the process was inherently compromised. For instance, institutions typically book them into luxurious hotels, they said. Further, 'The NAAC teams are given the best food and fancy cars to chauffeur them around,' one teacher said. This was not always the case. Moushumi Basu, faculty from Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that until a few years ago the NAAC team that visited the campus would only stay in the guesthouse on the campus. 'It actually makes sense for them to stay on campus so they get the full experience of the campus,' she said. 'But the last time, they didn't stay on campus, they were instead put up in a private five-star hotel. I'm not sure how the university even had the money to pay for that.' These practices persist despite formal changes to NAAC policy intended to prevent them from occurring, Nesan said. 'About ten years ago, they made it mandatory for us to stay in the hotel that is booked for us and only travel by the tickets that are booked for us by NAAC.' He added, 'Only food and travel can be arranged by the institution.' But in spite of these rules, several teachers said, institutions continue to host inspection committee members in extravagant hotels, and provide them with cars, and lavish meals. The vice chancellor of the prominent university in Tamil Nadu said that, indeed, in his experience NAAC teams visiting campuses carry these expectations too. 'Those few days are very hectic for us,' he said. 'Our staff is burdened with work and we have to focus especially on making their stay and travel comfortable.' Changes to the process In 2022, a committee formed by the ministry of education recommended reforms intended to 'strengthen assessment and accreditation' by the NAAC. In November 2023, the committee released its report, recommending reforms such as eliminating field visits as far as possible, converting the assessment process to an entirely online one, making the accreditation purely binary and dropping the grading system but introducing one that categorised institutions as being between Level 1 and Level 5. The NAAC did not implement the reforms for two years, but stated in January 2024 that it would do so by December 2024. In February, after the incidence of corruption came to light, the NAAC stated that the reforms would be fully implemented by May 2025. In any case, Nesan said, the reforms were unlikely to have a significant impact because, in his view, many institutions also had access to the NAAC as an organisation, and that while inspections were a key step, the final grade was assigned by NAAC officials, not the inspection committee. He recounted that in some instances, he had given a poor grade after inspecting an institution, only to later find that its final grade was an A. 'How is that even possible?' he said. Balaji and Kisana also believe that the decision to go completely online appeared to have been taken hurriedly, in response to the controversy, and was unlikely to make any difference in the long term. 'Just because something is online doesn't mean corruption doesn't take place,' Balaji said. 'People will always find a way.' Kisana said, 'Because NAAC is under pressure to take some measures they have announced this decision. How can there be any transparency when the process is online?' Meanwhile, in the new binary system, according to an NAAC document, an institution will be either be ''Accredited', 'Awaiting Accreditation' (for those who are close to the threshold level) or 'Not Accredited' (for those who are far below the standards for accreditation).' In theory, Nesan believes this is a good idea. 'India is the only country where there is a grading system, which is why institutions are in a rat race to get the best grade,' he said. He explained that he had visited universities across the world and had observed that all of them had a binary system of accreditation. 'You are either accredited or not. That's it,' he said. 'All they need to know is that the university meets minimum standards of quality education. And 100% of the score is based on the field visit, and it's a completely qualitative assessment.' But, experts argued, the new binary system is unlikely to be significantly different given that the NAAC has also brought in 'maturity-based grading accreditation' where institutions that are graded can move from Level 1 to Level 5, a scale in which the first four levels mark an institution out as being of national excellence, while the fifth marks it out as being of global excellence. 'So all they seem to have done is moved from alphabets to numbers,' Kisana said. Balaji noted that the National Education Policy, 2020, had exacerbated the problem of institutions racing to secure good NAAC grades and even indulging in corruption in the process. 'The NEP states that the education ministry will come up with an accreditation system and determine parameters' to grade institutions, Balaji explained. The NEP recommends that this grade should determine whether an institution can be granted autonomous status, or the status of a university. 'Essentially what the NEP is saying is that all colleges need is a good grade to become a university, which has led to the mushrooming of private institutions and the privatisation of education,' he said. Further, he noted, this new system and parameters that the NEP laid out were never set up – rather, the ministry continues to rely on the three-decade-old NAAC system, which is riddled with problems. Some academics believe that the very introduction of the NAAC was itself problematic because the quality of teaching and learning cannot be quantified. 'Each person teaches differently. How do you quantify something like that?' Kisana said. Nesan said that the NAAC followed a 'rote and notorious backward system'. Any quantification should 'assess outcomes, not functions of the institution', he said. How, he asked, 'do you assess teaching, the ambience and culture on campus and its social aspects?' Kisana argued that in effect, the NAAC pushes 'institutions to invent a whole paper bureaucracy'. He added, 'There is no mechanism for teachers to come out and openly state these things out in the open. The minute we do, we will be fired from our jobs and also be unable to get any jobs in the future.'
