SHIMLA/NEW DELHI: Senior citizens are increasingly being targeted by cyber fraudsters who impersonate police officers, CBI, TRAI, RBI and other government officials, place victims under a fictitious “digital arrest”.
They then use threats of arrest, money laundering cases and account seizures to force them to transfer their life savings.
The Enforcement Directorate’s latest investigation in Guwahati illustrates how sophisticated these operations have become.
According to the ED, fraudsters posing as officials of TRAI, the Mumbai Crime Branch and the CBI contacted a senior citizen and falsely claimed that a bank account opened in his Aadhaar-linked identity was involved in money laundering.
The victim was allegedly kept under “digital arrest” through WhatsApp video calls. Investigators found that the fraudsters showed him fabricated court proceedings and a fake “Digital Arrest Warrant”, instructed him to mark his presence every two hours and threatened him with detention under the National Security Act if he disclosed the matter to anyone.
The fraudsters then created another layer of pressure by claiming that the victim’s family funds had to undergo an “RBI inspection”. Later, under the pretext of a fake “bail bond”, he was allegedly coerced into transferring about ₹2.13 crore in 19 transactions.
According to the ED, the victim liquidated fixed deposits, mutual funds and shares and even took loans against his pension account and insurance policies to meet the demands of the fraudsters.
The investigation showed that the money did not remain in the first accounts into which it was deposited.
The ED said the proceeds were transferred through multiple layers of bank accounts belonging to individuals, firms and companies across the country.
The funds were subsequently withdrawn in cash, converted into digital currency, routed through payment gateways or transferred to other accounts.
According to the agency, the movement was designed to conceal the money trail and indicated an organised network of “mule” accounts.
The ED traced 43 bank accounts through which the alleged proceeds of crime had moved and identified balances that were still available.
It subsequently provisionally attached balances aggregating to about ₹2.12 crore in these accounts under Section 5(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
This is not an isolated case. Infact in June, the National Human Rights Commission said more than 3,000 digital-arrest frauds targeting elderly persons had been reported in the previous year.
The data cited by the Commission is mind-boggling. Its data indicated that Indian citizens had lost whopping ₹52,976 crore to cyber-enabled fraud over six years, with nearly 8% of the losses attributed to digital-arrest scams.
In another case investigated by the CBI, a senior woman citizen was allegedly threatened by callers impersonating security and counter-terrorism officials and coerced into transferring ₹25.65 lakh after being falsely told that her bank account was linked to terrorism-related activities.
The method relies less on sophisticated hacking than on psychological manipulation.
Fraudsters create an atmosphere of urgency and fear, impersonate authorities, produce forged documents and keep victims continuously engaged on calls so they have little opportunity to verify the claims or consult family members.
Recent cases also show the scale of the financial targeting countrywide. In Mumbai, police arrested six people in September in an alleged digital-arrest scam involving a 68-year-old senior citizen who was reportedly cheated of ₹1.12 crore.
The authorities repeatedly stressed that citizens should not transfer money merely because someone claiming to be a police, CBI, RBI or other government official threatens arrest over a phone or video call.
The CBI has advised people not to share bank details, passwords, OTPs or other financial credentials with unknown callers and to report suspected cyber fraud immediately through 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
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