Retired banker threatened with links to Cambodia human trafficking racket loses Rs 63 lakh in digital arrest scam

According to the complaint, on November 26, the complainant received a video call from a cyber fraudster posing as ‘Inspector Kuldeep Singh from Mumbai Crime Branch’, who told him that his name had been flagged in human trafficking and money laundering cases.

The complainant was subsequently sent a fake notice from the ‘Enforcement Directorate’, claiming he had links with Sadakat Khan. Khan was arrested from Delhi airport by Telangana police last year for his involvement in an international human trafficking racket in Cambodia, where many Indian youth were taken on the pretext of job and were forced into perpetrating cybercrimes. Subsequently, fraudsters posing as ED and Reserve Bank of India officials contacted the complainant saying that he was placed under ‘digital arrest’ and that he may have to be imprisoned for his links to Sadakat Khan.

According to the complaint, on the pretext of clearing his name from the case, the fraudsters asked the complainant his personal and financial information and then asked him to transfer his savings to some ‘government accounts’ for verification. In two transactions, the complainant transferred Rs 63.4 lakh to mule accounts and was promised that the money would be returned to him in 30 minutes once the verification was over. As the money never returned, the complainant got suspicious and contacted a lawyer friend who made him realise that he had been cheated. He then approached the cybercrime police station and registered an FIR.

Express has reported that cyber criminals, who prey on the vulnerabilities of victims, have dropped names, used fake identities and impersonated well-known figures to perpetrate frauds. From Deepfake videos of Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy to forged warrants bearing the signature of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, video calls from fraudsters posing as CBI, ED directors to current NIA chief Sadanand Date, from Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal to former Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik — the list goes on. Police investigation of specific categories of cyber frauds over the last three years revealed that citizens continue to fall prey to these frauds as cybercriminals use social engineering to pull them off.

Officials have expressed concern that despite broad awareness drives, cases of “digital arrest,” online extortion, and blackmail persist. Cybercriminals posing as police, CBI, narcotics officials, RBI or ED officers, and even High Court and Supreme Court judges continue to target citizens. The issue, highlighted even by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address, involves sophisticated cross-border networks. As reported earlier, these syndicates use layers of mule accounts inside India, channeling victims’ money through them before moving it to global cybercrime operations, often via cryptocurrency.