In a shocking case of digital arrest, a 26-year-old woman in Mumbai was forced to strip during a video call and duped of Rs 1.7 lakh by scamsters who said her name had cropped up in a money laundering probe, police have said.
The woman, who lives in Borivali East and works with a pharmaceutical company, has said in her complaint that the scamsters called her on November 19 and introduced themselves as Delhi Police officers. 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 a sum of Rs 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 scamsters’ instructions.
On realising later that she had been conned, she approached the police and filed a complaint on November 28. A case has been registered under relevant sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhit and the Information Technology Act and further probe is on.
Earlier, fraudsters had used Naresh Goyal’s name to dupe Shri Paul Oswal, chairman and managing director of textile giant Vardhman Group, of Rs 7 crore. In that case, too, the octogenarian was told that he was under ‘digital arrest’.
What is ‘Digital Arrest’?
‘Digital arrest’ is a new kind of fraud in which fraudsters tell the target that he/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/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 very savvy with technology and are easily duped by fraudsters into following their instructions. But of late, scamsters have started targeting younger adults too.