Mumbai woman duped of ₹1.7 lakh in 'digital arrest' scam

In yet another shocking case of digital arrest, a woman in Mumbai was forced to strip during a video call and duped of ₹ 1.7 lahks by scamsters who said her name had come up in a money laundering probe, police said.

In her complaint, the 26-year-old woman who lives in Borivali East and works with a pharmaceutical company said that the scamsters called her on Nov 19 and posed themselves as Delhi police officers.

According to her, they told her that her name had emerged during their investigation into a money laundering case linked to Naresh Goyal, the founder-chairman of Jet Airways currently in jail.

The scamsters threatened the woman with arrest. The conversation then shifted to video call and she was told that she was under 'digital arrest'. The scamsters asked the woman to book a hotel room so that they could continue the interrogation.

Once she had checked in to a hotel, the scamsters said she needed to transfer ₹1,78,000 to verify her bank account details. They also made her strip during the video call, saying that a body verification was needed. The woman transferred the amount and followed the scammer's instructions, she told the police.

On realizing later that she had been conned, she approached the police and filed a complaint on Nov 28. A case has been registered under relevant sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhit (BNS) and the Information Technology Act and the probe is on, officials were quoted as saying.

Earlier, fraudsters had used Naresh Goyal's name to dupe Shri Paul Oswal, chairman and managing director of textile giant Vardhman Group of ₹7 crore. In that case, too, the octogenarian was told that he was under 'digital arrest'.

New Fraud

'Digital arrest' is a new kind of fraud in which fraudsters tell the target that he or she is under 'digital' or 'virtual' arrest and must remain connected to them over a video or audio call.

The target is told that he or she cannot tell anyone else that they are under a 'digital arrest' and the surveillance does not end till the money is transferred to the fraudsters' accounts.

Police have stressed in several advisories that there is nothing called 'digital arrest' or 'virtual arrest', but the rise in such incidents shows that the message has not reached a large section.

The preferred targets of such fraud are senior citizens who are not tech-savvy and are easily duped by fraudsters into following their instructions. The scamsters have started targeting younger adults too of late.