An 81-Year-Old is Tricked Out of ₹88 Lakhs by A Digi-Arrest Scammer Posing as a Kolkata IPS Officer
81-Year-Old is Tricked Out of ₹88 Lakhs by A Digi-Arrest Scammer Posing as a Kolkata IPS Officer
Kolkata: A sophisticated cyber fraud scheme cost an 81-year-old resident of Rabindrapally in Kestopur ₹88 lakh. One of the con artists pretended to be the joint CP of the Kolkata Police. The others pretended to be law enforcement officers and telecom authorities. Only after reading about a similar digital arrest hoax in the papers did the victim realize he had been duped. The Bidhannagar cybercrime police station filed a case on Monday under several BNS 2023 sections as a result of the event.
A formal complaint was submitted by Manishi Nath Das, who claimed that he was tricked by a series of coordinated phone calls between May 31 and June 2, the first of which was made at 2:00 PM on May 31. The scammers used complex strategies, such as making bogus accusations of money laundering and human trafficking and threatening to arrest the victim.
The lawsuit claims that the scam started when Das got a call from someone posing as a telecom department officer, who claimed that Das’s Aadhaar card credentials were being used to misuse his cellphone number. After that, the phone was routed to someone claiming to be from a Karnataka police station and identifying himself as Sandip Rao.
“The perpetrators created a web of deception, even claiming there was a Supreme Court arrest warrant against me,” Das told the police. Das allegedly sold his Aadhaar details to a man named Sadakat Khan for ₹40 lakh, according to the scammers.
When Das was told that he had been “digitally arrested” by a second caller posing as an IPS officer and using the same identity as an IPS officer from the Kolkata Police, the scene became more heated. Das transferred ₹51.5 lakh from his public sector bank account to another private bank account and ₹36.5 lakh from his nationalized bank account to a private bank account under pressure.
The National Cybercrime Reporting Portal has also received a complaint from Das.
An overwhelming percentage of victims of digital arrests are older individuals, which authorities claimed might be due to a variety of causes, from a parent’s age-related emotional susceptibility to a degree of unfamiliarity with the new digital world. One can see why cybercriminals target this generation to threaten and blackmail them in the name of digital arrest when you consider the stress and boredom of not having children at home.
About The Author:
Yogesh Naager is a content marketer who specializes in the cybersecurity and B2B space. Besides writing for the News4Hackers blogs, he also writes for brands including Craw Security, Bytecode Security, and NASSCOM.
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