3 'digital arrests'. ₹3.8cr, ₹5cr, ₹45L lost. Method: drugs, WhatsApp call, money transfer

In perhaps the longest cases of ‘digital detention’ in Mumbai by cyber fraudsters posing as law enforcers, a 77-year-old south Mumbai woman was kept under ‘digital custody’ for more than a month. Threatened with arrest in a fake money laundering case, the accused duped her of Rs 3.8 crore, said the police.Neena (name changed), a homemaker, lives with her retired husband (75) in the city while her two children are abroad.Police said Neena first received a WhatsApp call some two months ago. The caller told her the parcel she had sent to Taiwan had been stopped and it contained five passports, a bank card, clothes weighing 4kg, MDMA drugs, and so on. She told the caller she had not sent any parcel to anyone. The caller then said Neena’s Aadhaar card details had been used in the crime and asked her to talk to a Mumbai 'police officer', who told her that her Aadhaar card was linked to a money laundering case which was under investigation, though she denied any involvement in it.“The complainant was then asked to download the Skype app and told that the police officers would talk to her through it. She was ordered not to disconnect and not to tell anyone about the case. A man posing as Anand Rana, an IPS officer, sought details of her bank accounts. Later, another man claiming to be George Mathew, also from the IPS, from the finance department, came on the call and asked her to transfer money into bank accounts given by them so that they could probe the case. They told her the money would be returned to her if found to be ‘clear’,” said a police officer. The accused also sent Neena a fake Mumbai crime branch notice with a police logo.The accused asked the woman to continue her WhatsApp video call 24x7. She switched on the video call on her family computer. “If the complainant disconnected the call or it got disconnected, the accused would call her back and ask her to connect again and keep checking her location,” said a police officer.She was then instructed to go to the bank and transfer money and told if the bank inquired why she needed it, she could tell them that she wanted to buy a property.Gained trustNeena transferred the money and the accused returned Rs 15 lakh into her account, saying it was clear. Returning the money was a smart move because it succeeded in gaining her trust. They then asked her to send more money from her and her husband’s joint accounts. Over a period of time, she transferred Rs 3.8 crore into six bank accounts.The woman eventually suspected something was amiss when she did not get her money back while the accused kept demanding more funds for taxes and to “clear” the money while keeping her under “voluntary surveillance”. She then called her daughter who told her to approach the police. She dialled the 1930 cyber helpline. Investigators have frozen six bank accounts of the accused. A team led by DCP Dutta Nalawade and comprising senior inspector Nandkumar Gopale, inspector Kiran Jadhav and PSI Sachin Trimukhe is probing the case. Similar modus operandi: Drugs, WhatsApp call, online money transferRecently, TOI reported on another ‘digital arrest’ case when a 48-year-old businesswoman based in Delhi-NCR was conned in similar fashion. Vidya (name changed) said her phone rang and the man on the other end introduced himself as a DHL employee in fluent English. A being couriered from Mumbai to Beijing had been intercepted by the “Bombay customs office”, he said, and the parcel contained MDMA.Like Neena, Vidya too said she didn’t even know what MDMA was. “I told the man I had not sent such a package,” she said.The DHL employee said Vidya would still have to come to the customs office in Mumbai to prove her innocence. Wary, she demanded his employee number. “He gave it so confidently that for the first time I started believing this might be a serious situation,” she said.Over the next couple of hours, Vidya spoke to one voice after another. The first claimed to be a constable who gave her a Microsoft Skype ID and password to log in. Behind the constable, an intercom crackled, ‘there is an arrest warrant in her name.’As Vidya panicked, she was directed to a ‘senior police official’ to explain her case. The video flickered on briefly to reveal a police official in uniform sitting at a desk barking orders. After that she only heard a ‘voice’, sometimes it was an official claiming to be from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and other times from the Enforcement Directorate (ED).She was asked to change her ID several times and use a password “centa05” before she spoke to anyone from the ‘authorities’.Instructions were given in a firm but scolding voice: Delete all extra apps from your phone. Take all calls on the speaker phone. Keep your video on, except if you are in the bathroom but even then, the audio should always be on. “They watched me make tea and eat food,” she recalled. Vidya said that the story appears incredulous in hindsight, but at the time, her “brain had shut down”. “I was told that I was part of a criminal gang that had conned over 200 families. To prove my innocence, I would have to show that I had not benefited from the proceeds of the crime,” she said.Vidya was asked to share her bank accounts and investment details. Soon they were “convinced” of her innocence but now they wanted her to “cooperate” with the investigation and help her nab the “gang”. “I thought they were protecting me, and I was helping them catch criminals,” she said.The voice wanted her to give all her money to start the investigation. Vidya was told her money would be returned if she was innocent. Less than 24 hours later — on September 2 — she had begun to liquidate her mutual fund investments.“They asked me to go to the HDFC Bank branch, gave me an ICICI bank account, and make the transfers via RTGS. All the while they kept me on video and kept insisting that this operation was meant to catch criminals within HDFC Bank who are involved in the case. I believed them,” she saidVidya made transfers of over Rs 5 crore on September 4 and 5 to an account in Haryana’s Jhajjar that had barely Rs 1,500 as balance.“After the first tranche was moved, I sensed a change in tone… there was no more talk of investigation. It was replaced by light-hearted banter. It was then that the penny dropped,” she said. She ended the call and called a friend with the belated realisation that she had been duped.She filed a FIR a few days later and found that within a few hours, her money had been moved to multiple other accounts. The police are investigating the case.Two months later, Vidya admitted that the whole episode sounds completely irrational even to her. “They had a way of hypnotising me, getting into my head and getting me to act in a way that seems completely bizarre now.”She faulted the banking system for allowing high-value transfers with such ease. “I told the bank that I needed the money for a major surgery but the fact that I was in the branch for 45 minutes while on Skype video should have set off alarm bells,” she said.'Digital arrests' across cities and statesJust this month, another ‘digital arrest’ scam was reported from Hyderabad when a 73-year-old retired lecturer lost Rs 45.5 lakh.Ch Purshotham Sharma of Malkajgiri said he received a call on November 12 from a person claiming that authorities intercepted a parcel containing banned drugs. The caller alleged that Sharma's Aadhaar number was linked to the parcel, implicating him in a money laundering case. To avoid ‘arrest', the caller provided a contact number for a purported CBI officer in Ahmedabad and instructed Sharma to cooperate.A man posing as a CBI officer appeared in a police uniform during a WhatsApp video call and threatened Sharma with immediate legal action if he failed to comply. The retired lecturer shared his bank account details and transferred money via Google Pay, Paytm, net banking and RTGS to various accounts as directed by the scammers.To appear legitimate, the fraudsters issued fake receipts, supposedly from the Supreme Court and signed by the registrar, as confirmation of the payments.The transactions, made over multiple days, totalled Rs 45.5 lakh. Sharma later realised that he was duped and approached Rachakonda cyber crime police. Based on his complaint, a case was registered under relevant sections of BNS and sections 66(C) and 66(D) of IT Act, which deal with identity theft and cheating by personation.