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Ahmedabad: In what is being described as a first-of-its-kind case, a non-resident Indian (NRI) youth in Australia became a victim of a "digital arrest" scam, with cyber fraudsters cheating him out of Rs 48 lakh from both his Austrian and Indian bank accounts.
The Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Police Station registered an FIR on Tuesday on the basis of a complaint filed by the victim's father who lives in Ahmedabad.
He told the police that his son, who lives in Adelaide, lost 25,000 dollars, roughly Rs 14 lakh, from ANZ bank and Commonwealth Bank accounts and Rs34 lakh from Axis Bank in Ahmedabad to cyber criminals who had put him under "digital arrest" in August.
The father came to know about it nearly a month later on September 27 after his second son, who also lives in Australia, informed him about the incident. The FIR says that the father contacted Cyber Crime Helpline 1930 and informed about the crime.
According to the FIR, the victim first received a call from a woman identifying herself as Shruti Agarwal, an officer from the Indian high commission office. The caller told him that Mumbai police were looking for him to arrest as there was an arrest warrant pending against him. She gave him a phone number and asked to get in touch.
When the victim dialed the number the receiver informed that the number belonged to Mumbai Crime Branch headquarters and asked him to make a video call.
What followed was a classic example of a "digital arrest" scam. Cyber fraudsters posing as police officers informed the victim that a phone number registered in his name had been linked to cryptocurrency and money laundering activities, which required investigation.
He was then put in touch with a "field commander Pradip Shawant" and Rajesh Mishra who were handling the case. The scammers convinced the victim that bank accounts had been opened in his name and used for multiple illegal transactions.
Employing psychological pressure as their tactic, they manipulated him into believing the situation was real. The victim was kept on video call for a week and forced to buy a new phone and a sim card and the fraudsters got access to his bank accounts from which a total of Rs48 lakh were swindled in the name of verifying its sources from the RBI.
According to the FIR, the victim also received a call from the scamster posing as a top RBI officer.