BHOPAL: What could a pedigreed industrialist whose group of companies has a consolidated turnover of over Rs 10,000 crore, a retired senior bureaucrat, a scientist, a high ranking police officer who has since hung his boots, and a female lawyer possibly have in common?
Of course, they are all well educated and intelligent, else they wouldn't have been in the high stations they were/are in life. For example, the industrialist is a gold medallist from Punjab University and a Padma Bhushan awardee, the nation’s third most prestigious civilian decoration. All of them have a digital presence, as can be expected in this wired world. A healthy bank balance plus the attendant vulnerabilities are the natural corollaries. And the fear of God the central law enforcement agencies have invoked over the last few years in the pursuit of dirty money for whatever reason, has not left them untouched.
Despite being smart cookies, they ended up getting conned and being placed under what is called a ‘digital arrest’. Their snowballing incidence across the country recently forced the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) — an initiative of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs - to issue an advisory explaining that there is no such thing as digital arrest. I4C is the nodal point to curb cybercrime in the country. “The CBI, Enforcement Directorate (ED), state police, Customs, or judges do not arrest people through video calls. Don’t panic, stay alert,” I4C said and urged people to report such crimes at the central helpline number 1930 or the website — www.cybercrime.gov.in.
What is cyber arrest?
It's a cybercrime technique, whose incidence has been on the rise since a year and a half. Fraudsters posing as law enforcement officials of various agencies, including the state police (particularly the crime branch), CBI, ED, Income Tax, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and even the Supreme Court, put victims under immense mental stress, accusing them of knowingly or unknowingly indulging in major crimes, such as human trafficking, narcotics smuggling and/or trafficking or money laundering. Or that their close relative is under arrest for any or a combination of these alleged crimes.
The fraud typically begins with a video call where the con artists make the otherwise worldly wise believe they are in conversation with genuine investigators of a major law enforcement agency to build fear psychosis. Once softened, the scamsters confine the targets to their premises, including a room, where they are placed under digital arrest and directed to keep their cellphone cameras and microphones on 24x7. Demand for money could follow for securing bail. The other ruse is to verify whether their savings aren't proceeds of crime.
To do that, they advise the targets to transfer their funds to a special purpose digital receptacle for a short while till the verification is complete, which essentially are certain specific bank accounts. After the funds are dropped in the receptacle, they are sucked out in no time through multiple layers/chains of bank accounts and the caller hangs up for good.
How the victims fail to see through the trick of digital verification of funds and allow themselves to be conned to voluntarily load them into the special receptacle, boggles the mind. But such are the mind games the scamsters are successfully playing with otherwise sharp individuals having pretty deep pockets.
A few cases
S P Oswal, chairman and managing director of the Vardhman Group, was recently duped of more than Rs 7 crore. He was misled into believing that he was under probe in a money laundering case. Besides using fake documents and claiming the CBI was hot on his heels, the cyber fraudsters went to the extent of creating a fake Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud to hear his case. That Oswal reportedly paid up after the ‘court verdict’, indicates the dexterity and sophistication the digital crooks are capable of.
Last week, in Madhya Pradesh’s financial capital Indore, a scientist from the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT-Indore) lost his entire savings of Rs 71.33 lakh — set aside for his daughter’s marriage) — after he and his wife were placed under digital arrest in his house for six long days with small breaks in between.
The fraudsters began by posing as officials of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). They subsequently took many avatars, including that of the Delhi Police crime branch, ED, CBI and RBI, to maximise the fear of physical arrest. The con artists then smooth-talked him into crediting all his savings into some specific bank accounts, claiming the RBI needed to verify whether or not they were proceeds of money laundering. Shortly after he complied, all of it vanished as they were forwarded into a maze of other bank accounts.
In another shocking instance, a female lawyer from Bengaluru was reportedly forced to strip for a ‘narcotics test’ while under another digital arrest in what was called a drug trafficking case. She was subjected to video surveillance and digital arrest for two days before being relieved of Rs 14 lakh to ‘escape’ physical arrest. Besides, Rs 10 lakh more was extorted from her by using her nude videos.
In Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow, a well-known writer and poet was put under digital arrest in his room for around six hours in July last. The fraudsters posed as CBI officers probing a money laundering case, and curiously listened to poetry from him for hours, including couplets of Mirza Ghalib and Faiz. It was his daughter-in-law who sensed something was amiss. She barged into the room and disconnected the call in a flash, saving him from financial loss. The family then reported the harassment to the Gomti Nagar police station, where an FIR was lodged.
While these are some of the prominent cases reported to the law enforcement agencies, there are other highly-placed bureaucrats and police officers — serving and retired — who were subjected to cyber arrest but possibly chose not to lodge formal police complaints.
For example, a former high ranking police officer, who served in the senior most positions in his home state, was duped of around Rs 2 crore by fraudsters who put him under digital arrest, alleging that he was being probed in a money laundering case. Fortunately for him, while he was transferring the money into the receptacle or master account as directed by the cyber criminals, he got a former colleague’s alert and was aborted. He can consider himself lucky because the master account was already under police surveillance. When the cybercrime cell noticed a fund transfer to the dodgy account from of the retired officer's bank account, they shared the information with their boss, who quickly alerted the victim. Perhaps by mutual consent, the matter was quietly buried.
Modus operandi and targets
Fraudsters make video calls using Skype or WhatsApp to their potential victims alleging serious crimes, like money laundering, drug or human trafficking, along with threats of long jail terms. The callers use props like uniforms, documents (including notices and arrest warrants), ID cards and rooms similar to offices of law enforcement agencies. They force their targets to keep their camera and microphones on at all times and incrementally build fear with warnings of dire consequences. The targets are particularly cautioned against consulting anyone in the matter.
Once the targets succumb, the scamsters start controlling their movements remotely. The targets are either asked to transfer money into fake accounts for RBI verification or are made to strike the best possible monetary deal to evade physical arrest.
According to retired IPS officer Prof Triveni Singh, a renowned cybercrime expert who served in the UP Police, “the targets are often retired government servants. Their entire profile is carefully analysed by fraudsters through social media before they strike. There are enough tools on the internet that allow the crooks to scroll through the full timeline of their targets without arousing suspicion.”
Another unique feature of the digital arrest racket is its penetration of courier companies — particularly FedEx — to extract information of packages sent by wealthy customers. “Those customers are then targeted by the scamsters, posing as NCB/Customs officials. The targets are told their arrest is imminent as their parcel was intercepted by the NCB or Customs officials at airports or ports and that it was found to have some narcotic substance.” The criminals then place the victim under digital arrest, added Singh, who is now the mentor of an NGO working on future crimes, particularly cybercrimes.
FedEx has since issued a statement saying it does not seek personal information through unsolicited calls. “FedEx does not request personal information through unsolicited phone calls, mail, or email for goods being shipped or held, unless requested or initiated by customers. Individuals should immediately contact the local law enforcement authorities within the vicinity or report to the cybercrime department of the government of India."
It’s not just senior citizens or retired government officials who are potential targets, Indore Police’s crime branch additional SP (ASP-Crime) Rajesh Dandotiya adds. “It’s people of all ages, including doctors, engineers, retired and present teachers and other government servants, businessmen and even in one case a PG student of a medical college, who’ve been duped in Indore.”
When the menace in Indore began around a year ago, the fraudsters at the other end of the call posed as representatives of a big courier company and then connected the victims to fake officers of enforcement agencies. “But the recent trend is of the targets getting video calls particularly on WhatsApp from miscreants posing as TRAI officials, who accuse the victims of SIM cards purchased in their names, being used to post obscene videos of women and girls, and indulging in human/drug trafficking, besides money laundering. The multi-layered fraud subsequently unfurls, as fake officers of different enforcement agencies start grilling the victims one by one after putting them under digital arrest. It may end in hours or take days (in Indore, cases saw digital arrests ranging between 3 hours and 7 days) before the scamsters finally make the targets cough up hefty sums into master accounts, which are transferred out in a jiffy,” Dandotiya informs.
Interestingly, the scam is not an exclusive male preserve. Females too are partners in the crime, reveals Prof Singh. Well-educated or not, they come across as confident individuals who know what they are talking about. “They may be using some small studios, small call centres or even flats, where multiple offices having logos of different enforcement agencies have been created. Their cameras keep moving from one logo and fake officer to another to terrorise and soften the targets into submission.”
Mental trauma
The meticulous digital stalking and their confident persona give scamsters the ability to push their targets over the edge. “In many cases of digital arrest reported to the Indore Police crime branch this year, we’ve had to first do thorough psychological counselling of the victims, who after losing their entire savings, are pushed to the brink of contemplating suicide. We first try to ensure that the weak-hearted victims don’t harm themselves. We convince them that their battle is far from lost and that every swindled penny would be recovered and the crooks put behind bars. Only then the victims open up and cooperate with the investigators. We’ve found during investigations that in most cases, the victims or their families have hardly read or seen news items educating and warning about digital arrest. My strong advice to all is to read/see news reports of such crimes and not just stay alert, but also spread the word,” urges Dandotiya.
Ray of hope
Though digital arrest is among the most novel of crimes and may take some time for the law enforcement agencies to nail it down, action has already started and the outcome is significant. In May, the Delhi Police claimed to have worked out a case of digital arrest of a man for several hours (ultimately losing around Rs 44 lakh) in southwest Delhi’s Munirka. Two middle-aged men, identified as Rakesh Kumar Shah and Rashid Khan, who hailed from West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, were arrested.
In September, two youngsters identified as Rakesh Singh and Sachin Sangwan, residents of Delhi’s Patparganj, who were already in judicial custody at Tihar Jail in a 2023 cyber fraud case, were arrested for duping a Vasant Kunj resident of around Rs 5 lakh by posing as Mumbai crime branch sleuths.
In the same month, a couple of crooks from West Bengal and Assam were arrested by the Punjab Police for duping the Vardhman Group head and recovered Rs 5.25 crore. The rest of the gang members are facing police heat.
In Indore, the crime branch has made significant progress in cracking such cases. “Out of the 28 cases reported to us since February 2024, a total sum of Rs 2.5 crore has been swindled after digital arrests. Of them, over Rs 65 lakh has been recovered by freezing the master accounts and their subsequent layers in which the victims were coaxed to deposit their money. In one case pertaining to a female IT professional, Rs 6 lakh out of the swindled Rs 12 lakh has been recovered, following the arrest of a young graduate from Jhalawar (Rajasthan),” informs Dandotiya. “We’ve also helped the Rajasthan Police successfully crack a similar case of Rs 16 lakh fraud by arresting two men from Indore,” he adds.
The Indore crime branch’s multiple teams have already zeroed in on multiple bank accounts used by various scamsters to park the ill-gotten wealth and some of the SIM cards (phone numbers) employed for digital arrests. These accounts are spread across multiple states, including Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, UP, Delhi, Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune) and Telangana (Hyderabad).
“We’ve identified at least eight hotspots housing the cyber fraudsters who specialise in digital arrest. There are also instances of the scamsters using the bank accounts of poor, jobless people to park the proceeds of crime - for a monthly rent. These hotspots include Nuh and Gurugram in Haryana, Alwar in Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Noida, besides areas close to Kolkata and Bhubaneswar,” he adds. The crime branch in Indore has also detected the overseas footprint of some of these racketeers and are hoping to launch a crackdown in good time.
Deepfakes in play?
According to cybercrime experts, the sophistication of the scamsters suggests they are employing deepfake technology to convince their targets they indeed are law enforcement officers during the video call
There are some deepfake software that may just need as little as 10 seconds to a minute of audio recording of a person they intend to impersonate. The technology is capable of replicating various speech patterns, emotions and accents. It can reproduce the minutest of aspects of someone’s speech/audio, including natural pauses, pitch and intonation. How else could the seasoned Vardhaman Group CEO be fooled into believing that the CJI was hearing his case and delivering the verdict?
As per a New York Times report, in September, a caller posed as Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a video conference call with Senator Benjamin L Cardin, the chairman of the US Foreign Relations Committee. Although there was no monetary ripoff, it showed how fraudulent actors can manipulate key political leaders to influence outcomes using deepfakes
Though digital or virtual arrests have been happening across the world, including India, since the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they became more frequent in the past one-and-a-half years in the country perhaps due to a lack of awareness about deepfakes. Unless the target has anti-deep fake technology, it will be very difficult to detect the fraud
Some of the virtual arrest cases
This year
Aug 10
Woman duped of Rs 2 lakh by fake CBI officials claiming her husband had been arrested in a rape case. Kept under digital arrest for 6 hrs
Aug 10-15
79-yr-old retired Major General based in Noida put under cyber arrest for five days, duped of Rs 2 crore
Sept 21
Jayanthi, a professor and former journalist from TN, placed under digital arrest, duped of Rs 10 lakh
Sept 22
Retired female doctor in Jodhpur digitally arrested for 17 days, loses Rs 87 lakh
Sept 23
Retd bank employee in Meerut under digital arrest for alleged money laundering, duped of Rs 1.73 crore
Sept 24
Bengaluru MNC product marketing head under digital arrest for 10 hours by alleged FedEx officials, loses Rs 51 lakh
Sept 26
Senior National Buildings Construction Corporation official in Delhi duped of Rs 55 lakh after digital arrest
Sept 28
24-yr-old woman staffer of a Bengaluru firm loses Rs 5.4 lakh after digital arrest
Oct 8
Woman, 65, faces 5-day digital arrest in Indore, loses Rs 46 lakh
Oct 9
Woman loses nearly Rs 9.9 lakh after digital arrest for alleged money laundering in Noida
Oct 9
Man in Hyderabad loses Rs 10.61 crore in digital arrest scam
Oct 10
Jodhpur doctor duped of Rs 9.5 lakh after digital arrest for 24 hours
Oct 10
Retired senior citizen in Hyderabad conned of Rs 8.3 lakh in digital arrest fraud