North India Statesman
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New Delhi: If you also get a call from an unknown person who pretends to be a police officer and scares you, then stop! You may fall into the trap of a very dangerous ‘Digital Arrest’ scam. Cyber criminals have now become so vicious that they are threatening innocent people on video calls by creating a setup exactly like a police station, which was emptying people’s bank accounts wearing khaki uniform.
A recorded call and the ‘fear of death’ begins
The script of Digital Arrest starts with a simple but scary phone call. Mohit Yadav, a victim of this conspiracy, said that he received a call in which it was claimed that drugs were found in a parcel addressed to him. After this the call was transferred to a professional looking ‘call centre’, where the thugs started putting mental pressure on Mohit by threatening to implicate him in a fake case of money laundering.
Hoax of ‘fake police station’ and police uniform on WhatsApp
Look at the audacity of these thugs—these criminals appear on WhatsApp video calls wearing police uniforms. In Mohit’s case, the swindler was calling himself an officer of Mumbai’s Lokmanya Tilak police station. In the background of the video call, the police logo, government files and sounds of the wireless set looked so real that anyone would be deceived. To win trust, the swindler even said, “Go to Google and check the landline number of our police station, we are calling from there.”
The web of death is woven in three stages
Cyber thugs carry out their conspiracy in three deadly steps:
Trending Case Name: Scams deliberately mention cases that are in the news (like drug syndicates).
Fake Supreme Court website: The victim is sent a link which looks exactly like the Supreme Court site. As soon as the case number is entered there, the ‘arrest warrant’ in the name of the victim starts appearing on the screen.
Bank Balance Game: The fraudsters first ask for a screenshot of the bank balance. If there is a huge amount in the account, then ‘priority fee’ worth lakhs is demanded in the name of hushing up the case.
Mohit’s bravery exposed the thug
This time the criminal faced an alert citizen. When the swindler demanded Rs 80,000 to suppress the case, Mohit did not get scared but instead entangled him in his words. As soon as Mohit started recording the thug’s face and asking questions, the criminal sitting in police uniform got scared. Seeing his secret exposed, he started abusing and immediately disconnected the call.
