In yet another incident that has raised grave concerns about the increasing menace of cyber fraud, a fourth-year engineering student from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi was robbed of ₹4.3 lakh by a group of scamsters in a case known as the ‘digital arrest’ scam.
Police confirmed that the perpetrator, a 29-year-old named Madan Lal, was arrested in Chennai with strong suspicion that he was a part of a larger syndicate with propagandized international connections.
The ‘Digital Arrest’ Scam Worked Out Close
On November 16, 2024, the student received a call from a person claiming to be from the logistics company delivering parcels. He stated that a suspicious parcel being sent in the student’s name was being shipped from Mumbai to Beijing.
The call was then transferred to a woman who claimed to be from the Gamdevi Police Station in Mumbai. When the student disclaimed himself to be involved, he was referred back with someone taking on the form of an officer implanted with the same.
This impersonator accused the student of having been a party to various illegal activities and, when threatened with immediate arrest, said that certain documents were issued in his name.
Following these threats of imminent arrest and on the basis of false promises of evidence with reference to the student’s innocence, he was blackmailed into transferring not one but several sums of money to different bank accounts.
Between November 16 and November 18, under intense threat, he had transferred a total of ₹4.3 lakh through various online transactions.
Investigation and Arrest
When he came to know that he had been duped, the student filed a complaint with the police. Surendra Choudhary, the Deputy Commissioner of Police in Southwest, affirmed that the calls were traced to a Hong Kong-based number by the investigators.
Further investigation revealed that part of the fraudulently obtained money was transferred into a bank account in the name of Tejpal Sharma from Rai Singh Nagar in Rajasthan.
During the police interrogation, Sharma revealed that he gave his ATM card to his friend Gagandeep Singh, who later changed the mobile number linked to the account.
Gagandeep confessed to have given this account to his associate, Bajrang. This led the police to Madan Lal, who was arrested in Chennai. Under interrogation, Lal confessed and revealed that he withdrew money from ATMs, exchanged it for US currency and cryptocurrency, and was finally selling them to a Chinese citizen at a profit while accepting payments in bank accounts.
International Connections and Modus Operandi
It was found that the crime was in collusion with Chinese frauds. The accused would convert the extorted money to cryptocurrency and then sell the same to a Chinese citizen at a premium. This way, the stolen assets could be laundered without too much trouble tracking the funds by the authorities.
Increase Occurrences of the ‘Digital Arrest’ Scam
This case is another in the rising pattern of ‘digital arrest scams,’ where fraudsters pretend to be officials from law enforcement and regulatory agencies, accuse their victims of the commission of some crimes, and threaten them unless they transfer a sum of money to clear their names.
The most high-profile case of its nature, in November 2024, involved a chance arrest of a final-year student of IIT Bombay, who was let off by the scammers who posed as officials from TRAI.
The scammers accused the student of money laundering, coerced him into making payments to repay his participation, and pocketed ₹7.29 lakh in payments.
Precautionary Measures and Advisory
Authorities advise the public to exercise extreme caution with unsolicited calls to the tune that they might have been implicated in some criminal misconduct. No police department would ever ask for an amount of money over the phone to clear a legal dispute.
People should verify the identity of callers and, when in doubt, report such calls to the police within the shortest time possible.
