© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A 76-year-old doctor from Pimpri Chinchwad was duped of Rs 28 lakh by cyber criminals who posed as CBI officers and threatened him by saying he was under surveillance and that he had been placed under ‘digital arrest.’
An FIR was registered at Pimpri police station by the doctor, who has been practising for over 40 years. On the afternoon of November 28, when he was examining patients, he received a WhatsApp call from a man who identified himself as ‘CBI officer Ravi Kumar.’
The caller said the complainant’s name had been flagged in a probe of credit card fraud, in which he received a Rs 20 lakh commission on a transaction of Rs 1 crore. The caller told him that if the complainant did not pay Rs 20 lakh, an arrest warrant will be issued against him.
When the doctor denied of being involved in any such case, he was told that two notices — one from the Supreme Court and another from ED — had been issued against him. The fraudster posing as a CBI officer told him that since he was a senior citizen and a doctor, senior lawyers of the Supreme Court will help and he will have to take action as per instructions.
The ‘CBI officer’ then connected the call with a fraudster posing as a ‘Supreme court lawyer.’ The second fraudster sought all financial and personal information from the complainant on the pretext of getting his case details. The complainant was later told he was being placed under surveillance and ‘digital arrest’ and prohibited him from discussing the case with anyone or even talking to anyone. He was asked to answer a call every two hours and give updates.
The next day, the doctor again received a call and was asked to deposit Rs 28 lakh to particular accounts saying it was for clearing his name from the case. The complainant was instructed to go to the bank keeping his phone on and then transfer Rs 28 lakh to two separate accounts. The complainant did as instructed and told the caller he had made the transfer.
A while later, the complainant’s son got to know about the developments and made him realise that he had been cheated in a cyber scam. They later approached police and lodged a complaint.
The Indian Express had earlier reported that at the heart these scams are multilayered and geographically distributed multinational syndicates, siphoning money from unsuspecting victims to mule accounts and funnelling it to international cyber masterminds through the cryptocurrency route.
In an advisory issued about such online blackmailing cases, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in May, “A large number of complaints are being reported on National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) regarding intimidation, blackmail, extortion and “Digital Arrests” by cyber criminals posing as Police Authorities, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Narcotics Department, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Enforcement Directorate and other Law Enforcement Agencies.” These frauds were also highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently in his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ programme.
