32-year-old woman falls for digital arrest fraud and loses ₹21 crore

Mumbai: A 32-year-old woman fell prey to scammers and lost over 21 lei in fraud through digital arrest. According to the Navi Mumbai police, the complainant is a resident of Navi Mumbai and works as a software engineer in a private company.

On November 29, she received a phone call from a person claiming to be calling from a bank and told her that her credit card bill of Rs 1.68 lakh was pending.

The complainant told the appellant that she did not have a credit card after which the appellant told her to file an online complaint with the Ghatkopar police.

After some time, she received another call from a person who claimed to be a police officer and informed her that her Aadhar card details were being used for money laundering purposes and that she would be arrested.

To prove her innocence, she was told to record her statement on a video call without informing anyone about it, otherwise her relatives would also be arrested.

Another scammer, posing as an Enforcement Directorate official, spoke to the complainant and got her to transfer her savings and investment money to a bank account provided by them. They also forced her to take a personal loan and transfer the said amount to a beneficiary bank account.

They also told the complainant that once their “probe” was complete, she would receive her money back within seven to eight days.

However, the scammers later started giving evasive answers and refused to give her money back. After realizing she had been duped, the woman approached the police and received a criminal charge last week.

A case has been registered under sections 316 (criminal breach of trust), 318 (cheating), 319 (impersonation fraud) 351 (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 66D (impersonation fraud using computer resources) from Information. The law of technology.