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How digital arrest fraud is robbing Indians of their hard-earned money

Posted on by Larry
How digital arrest fraud is robbing Indians of their hard-earned money

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned listeners about his monthly magazine Mann Ki Baat radio about digital arrest fraud by scammers posing as law enforcement officers. Modi’s word of caution came as Indians lost Rs 120 crore in the process scam between January and April, according to government data. The Prime Minister assured listeners that law enforcement officials would never contact them by phone as part of their investigation.

Digital arrest fraud begins with scammers claiming to be law enforcement officers calling targets to say they have been accused in a criminal case. The scammers tell the targets that they have been digitally arrested. They are forced to remain on a video call for several hours and are asked not to contact anyone else as they are interrogated by scammers posing as officials. The victims are told that the investigation requires them to transfer money to the scammers.

The scams are highly sophisticated: men in police uniforms, staged court hearings and fake government announcements are among the many techniques used to convince targets that they are in trouble. The scammers are taking advantage of the fear most Indians have of getting involved with the law – even if they know they are innocent, cyber fraud experts say.

The modus operandi

Among those duped by scammers last month was an atomic energy scientist at a government institute in Indore. On September 1, he received a call from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. “The caller told me that a SIM card registered in my name had been used to conduct illegal transactions and harass a woman through text messages,” he said.

The call was forwarded to a person claiming to be an officer in Delhi’s cybercrime wing. This alleged agent appeared in uniform during a video call and told the scientist that he had been charged with money laundering and human trafficking and that a “digital arrest” warrant had been issued against him.

The scientist said that the document shown to him was so skillfully forged that it looked authentic. “It had an Ashok Chakra emblem, the letterhead of the cyber crime branch in Delhi, and it was signed by one Rakesh Kumar, under which name there is indeed an officer of the crime branch,” the scientist said. “I checked it on Google.”

Over the next two days, the scientist was asked to make a video call on WhatsApp. The scammers said this was required under the rules of digital arrest. On screen, an imposter posing as a crime branch officer and another claiming to be an official from the Central Bureau of Investigation interrogated the scientist and his wife for hours.

The scientist was told that he had been found guilty and that his assets would be investigated by the Reserve Bank of India. For this, he had to transfer the money in his savings account, mutual funds and fixed deposits to four different bank accounts. The money would be refunded within two hours after investigation, after which the scientist would receive clearance for his belongings from the local police station, the scammers claimed.

Fearing that his money would be seized if he did not do as he was told, the scientist transferred over Rs 71 lakh to the scammers’ accounts. He only realized he had been deceived after he went to the police station to obtain the alleged consent. “I have lost almost all my savings and I will retire in four years,” he said Role.

Scammers followed a similar script with at least two other victims speaking Role. One of them was 82-year-old SP Oswal, the chairman and director of the textile company Vardhman Group.

In August, Oswal paid Rs 7 crore in four installments to scammers who digitally arrested him. They told Oswal that he had been named as a suspect in a money laundering case linked to Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal. In this case, the scammers used the Skype platform for video calls, the industrialist said Role.

The scammers blackmailed Oswal into transferring the amount by sending arrest warrants claiming to be from the Enforcement Directorate and a fake Supreme Court order ordering him to send Rs 7 crore to an “official bank account” called “secret surveillance account” . After this, they said, Oswal would be released from digital arrest.

Another victim in Jharkhand lost over Rs 10 lakh in a digital arrest scam in the third week of October. In this case too, the 63-year-old retired professional was told that he was involved in the money laundering case involving Goyal.

For two days, scammers in police uniforms interrogated him via a WhatsApp video call. He was given a digital detention order and a 70-point guideline to follow. Later, a person dressed as a judge appeared during a video call for a “digital court hearing.” The fake judge sent him a fake court order asking to pledge all his assets as part of the investigation.

“The documents they sent seemed original, so I had no doubt that I was being scammed,” said the victim from Jharkhand.

The fear factor

The fear of being arrested is the most powerful weapon scammers have against victims of digital arrest fraud, experts said Role. The Indore scientist said that in retrospect it may have seemed that he had been naive. “But when someone in a police uniform appears on a video call and threatens you with arrest, the fear takes hold,” he said. “Now it feels like I was under hypnosis.”

Sushil Kumar, a former Bihar officer of India’s Cybercrime Coordination Centre, said the digital arrest scam is unusual in that the perpetrators willingly show their faces to create fear of legal action, while it is the victims who fear their names being linked is associated with criminal activities.

The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Center, or I4C, is controlled by the Union Home Ministry. It ensures coordination between the Center and all states in cybercrime cases.

The success of these scams has a political basis: the Modi government’s increased use of federal law enforcement agencies over the past decade.

“The proactive behavior of the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Investigation Agency in the past few years has contributed to fear psychosis among people,” Kumar said. “When people read about ED and CBI investigations every day, they become vulnerable and start to believe that agencies may have found them guilty.”

Journalist and cyber awareness expert Gautam Mengle agreed. “The scammers have discovered that there is a fear of law enforcement agencies in society and have developed their modus operandi around that fear,” he explained.

Mengle added that police and other investigative agencies need an internal investigation to understand why ordinary citizens panic when they receive calls from people claiming to be law enforcement officers.

The demographic profile of the target groups is also crucial: elderly people are more vulnerable. “…You would see that many victims of digital arrests are elderly and retirees,” says advocacy group Anuj Agarwal, who heads the nonprofit Center for Research on Cybercrime and Cyber ​​Law. “This section lacks digital literacy and is more concerned about reputation in society. If they are threatened with legal action, they are more likely to become victims.”

Agarwal, who runs cybercrime investigation training programs for police, said scammers have a major advantage because India does not value privacy. “Your Aadhaar details, banking details and phone number are openly available in the scammer ecosystem,” he said. “If someone calls you pretending to be a CBI officer and reads out your Aadhaar number, chances are you will think he is a real man. Data breaches must be resolved first. Otherwise the police will always be playing catch-up.”

The outing

Although the money is channeled through bank accounts, the police are having difficulty catching the scammers. Cyber ​​awareness expert Mengle said the scammers ask victims to transfer money to bank accounts obtained “for rent” from poor people such as street vendors or domestic workers.

“The scammer would give these people a commission every time a transaction is made,” Mengle explains. “After receiving a large sum of money, the amount is quickly sent in smaller parts to a number of other bank accounts. This can be done within a few minutes.”

Sushil Kumar, the police officer from Bihar, said once the money is transferred to different bank accounts, it becomes very difficult to follow the trail of a particular case. “A single account could have been used to defraud multiple people,” Kumar said. “If the account in question contains an amount of money, how can we definitively link that to the money a particular victim lost?”

Kumar added that the matter becomes further complicated if the money is transferred into the country via cryptocurrency and hawala. Police have found digital arrest cases involving foreigners transfer money to crypto accounts in Dubai.