Retired Army colonel in Pune loses Rs 62 lakh to ‘digital arrest’ fraud, threatened with action in ‘Rs 500 crore hawala scam’

According to officials, the senior citizen received a call from an unknown WhatsApp number sometime around mid-December last year. The caller identified himself as “Constable Vivek from the Delhi Cyber Cell”. He allegedly said that a hawala scam case of Rs 500 crore had been registered against the retired colonel and that the call was being transferred to his senior officer.

Later, a person wearing a police uniform came on the call and identified himself as “DCP, Delhi Cyber Cell”, officials said. The fraudster allegedly told the complainant that the “hawala money laundering case” against him was being probed and he would have to visit Delhi or face arrest. The fraudster later said that since the complainant was a senior citizen, the statement could be recorded online too, officials added.

On the pretext of a probe, the fraudster asked the complainant to share details of his savings and deposits, among other financial details, the senior citizen said in his complaint. He was then asked to remain on video call for a while and not to call or communicate with anyone as he was under ‘digital arrest’.

The fraudster told the complainant that all his savings and investments would have to be transferred to ‘government accounts’ for the probe and would be returned to him after the probe was over, officials said. In three transactions over five days, the complainant transferred Rs 62 lakh to fraud bank accounts registered in villages in Karnataka, Assam and Madhya Pradesh, he told the police.

Two days later, when the complainant called the number to ask for his money back, no one answered, he said. He realised he had been cheated and contacted the cyber crime helpline and Pune police’s cyber crime police station. A probe has been launched in the case.

Multiple cases have been reported in the past in Pune in which both serving and retired officers of the armed forces have been cheated in cyber scams, including share trading frauds. Multiple advisories have been issued by various armed forces formations in the recent past asking serving and retired personnel to follow rules of cyber hygiene.

The Indian Express has reported that multilayered and geographically distributed multinational syndicates lie at the heart of such scams, siphoning money from unsuspecting victims to mule accounts and funnelling it to international cyber masterminds through the cryptocurrency route.

An advisory about such online blackmail cases was issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs in May. These frauds were also highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year in his ‘Mann Ki Baat; programme.

In November last year, a 59-year-old senior IT executive from Pune lost Rs 6.29 crore in a digital arrest fraud to online criminals who posed as CBI officers.

Recently, a 78-year-old woman was swindled for Rs 4.37 crore after she endured a month-long ordeal in which she was manipulated by online criminals posing as CBI officers who threatened her with arrest for alleged drug trafficking charges.