Under arrest on Skype: How cybercriminals are using fear to scam Indians

Archana (name changed), a Bengaluru resident, is still clueless as to what prompted her to answer that automated voice call. Around 12:45pm on May 14, as Archana attended the call from an unknown number, she was told that her mobile number would be blocked in two hours. To know more, she was asked to press #9.“I listened to the message four times before pressing #9,” recalls Archana, who was then connected to a man who identified himself as Sanjeev Kumar, an official with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).What followed was the longest 90-minute call of her life. All she can remember now is fear, panic, anxiety and desperation to get out of the mess.Archana was told that her mobile number and Aadhaar were used for illegal activities in Mumbai. In an authoritative tone, the “Trai official” listed out crimes in her name including illegal marketing and blackmailing, which are punishable under the Indian Penal Code with two years’ imprisonment.A nervous Archana was given the option of either visiting the Mumbai police to offer a clarification or connect with its officers online and file a complaint. When she agreed, she was asked to download Microsoft’s video-calling platform Skype to submit her statement with the police for “official investigation”.A few minutes after the call got connected, a man in police uniform appeared on the screen and told her that an FIR has been filed against her after it was found that her phone number and Aadhaar details were used for illegal purposes.“He quoted the FIR number, which looked authentic. It made me believe that it was real,” Archana recounts, adding that she immediately consulted her brother who advised her not to pursue the conversation. medium110662455But not everyone is as lucky as Archana. Ritu (name changed), for instance, was intimidated with threats of arrest and imprisonment by a scammer pretending to be a customs department official and was forced to pay up ₹7 lakh after being put under digital arrest for more than a day.According to Raj Pagariya, partner, The Cyber Blog India, an organisation that works with cybercrime victims which helped her file a police complaint, Ritu was forced to stay online on Skype with the video turned on for 32 hours without even taking a break to relieve herself. Pagariya did not share personal details of Ritu like where she resides to protect her identity.Virtual arrest or digital arrest is the latest in the series of scams in which people are forced to stay under “arrest” as they are monitored over video-calling platforms. Criminals posing as government officials from regulators such as Trai and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intimidate victims with arrest and imprisonment and demand money to avoid it.Ever since the first FIR on digital arrest was filed in Noida in December 2023, there has been a sharp rise in such incidents. According to Pagariya, Cyberblog India deals with at least three to four cases of digital arrests every week.On May 14, the Union home ministry issued a warning about blackmail and digital arrests after it blocked more than 1,000 Skype IDs used by cybercriminals.ET Prime spoke with victims, investigating officers and security professionals to get to the bottom of this scam.Modus operandiRitesh Bhatia, founder of V4WEB Cybersecurity that works on cybercrime investigations and digital forensics, explained that digital arrests can be classified into three: parcel scams, threatening to arrest close relatives and impersonating government officials. According to him, the common thread across all three types of crimes is the threat of arrest to intimidate victims.But this is not a new phenomenon. In the past couple of years, scamsters have used intimidation and coercion to force victims to divulge sensitive information, including bank details and OTPs to steal money. But digital arrests have taken it a step further.“The modus operandi of the scammers is to build on fear and not allow people to think by keeping on asking questions. When you do that, even the smartest of people will give in,” Bhatia points out.Over the past five months, victims across India have lost crores in cases of digital arrests. In one instance, a Bengaluru-based resident was duped of ₹3.8 crore by criminals posing as Mumbai police. According to an Indian Express report, a former director of a private firm lost ₹25 crore in a digital arrest fraud. medium110662470According to a New Delhi-based officer, who is currently investigating the crimes and did not want to be named, a Cambodia link is suspected in these crimes. About 360 Indians have been rescued from cyber slavery in Cambodia after being lured with attractive jobs and salaries but were forced to con Indians through various scams including digital arrests.While this issue is still under investigation, there have been rising instances of cyber frauds targeting Indians from overseas, particularly from Southeast Asian countries.An analysis by Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the ministry of home affairs, has revealed that so far Indians have lost close to ₹120 crore on digital arrest scam.In addition, about 7,000 cyber-related frauds have been registered with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal daily, and 45% of them have their origins in Southeast Asia.Despite the scale of the issue, the modus operandi is hardly original.The Chinese connectionThe genesis of the digital arrest scam is not clear, but some early reports referring to the same came out a few years ago when scamsters impersonated Chinese police officers to target the Mandarin-speaking population in countries like the US, Australia and Singapore. Criminals posing as police officers told the victims, mostly students who had recently moved countries, that they were being investigated for financial crimes.According to market research platform Statista, the number of scams perpetrated by impersonating Chinese officers in Singapore was 487 in 2016. This jumped to 752 in 2021. In a 2019 advisory, the Singapore government said that between January and November 2019, $18.8mn was stolen through impersonation scams.Fighting the menaceThe Lucknow police recently arrested an individual who posed as a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer and duped a woman of ₹85 lakh and virtually arrested her. Multiple such cases have been filed across the country. Meanwhile, I4C is working closely with various ministries, the RBI and other government organisations to counter these frauds.“I4C is also providing inputs and technical support to police authorities of states/UTs for identifying and investigating the cases,” the ministry of home affairs said in a statement issued earlier this month.While several such efforts are underway, the question is: Are they enough?Lack of intentAccording to cybersecurity experts, many such incidents go unreported as the police are hardly sympathetic to the victims. Bhatia points out that people start talking about awareness the moment such incidents come to light and both the Centre and multiple state governments have issued advisories regarding these scams on social media platforms and in the press.“But how many people in the country actually see them? Not much,” he says.According to him, the need of the hour is consistently spreading awareness and using not just social media but all mediums including radio to reach out to even remote areas. “There is a lack of intent from the government in this respect,” he adds.Pointing out the lack of recourse available for the victims, Bhatia says, “In India, legal recourse should be the last resort for anyone, given that it takes years for cases to conclude.” Hence, he says, the banking system should assume more responsibility in countering cyber frauds, which again is not an easy task.