A woman from Gurugram is battling for justice after becoming the victim of a high-stakes digital arrest scam that cost her ₹5.85 crore (about $663,000). The nightmare started with a fake phone call saying that a drug package sent to China had been stopped. The caller pretended to be a police officer and used psychological manipulation over video chats for days to persuade her to do what he wanted.
For five days, she was effectively held hostage, with threats against her and her kid, and being watched on Skype all the time. She was under a lot of stress when she took out all of her funds and moved millions of dollars to several bank accounts. Now, she’s wondering what India’s biggest banks did wrong to let the fraud happen.
What is a scam that says you’re arrested online?
Criminals pretending to be police officials and making victims think they are being investigated is what a digital arrest scam is. People who are victims are forced to make video calls, are exploited psychologically, and are always being watched online.
The scammers use fear to get people to send money, frequently by making up allegations like drug smuggling or money laundering. Here is the link to our article on the West Bank Attack.
What happened throughout the scam?
Scammers were watching the woman, and she sent ₹28 million and ₹30 million through HDFC Bank over the course of two days in early September 2024. She adds that there were no fraud alarms, even though the quantities of the transactions were 200 times what she normally does with her bank.
Her relationship manager never called her to confirm anything, which raises severe doubts about the bank’s ability to keep an eye on things and protect its customers.
Did people not pay attention to banking safeguards?
She kept an eye on her money and found out that it initially went to an ICICI Bank account owned by a man named “Mr. Piyush.” Before getting the huge amount, the account had very little money in it. She wonders why such a hefty transfer didn’t raise any red flags under anti-money laundering rules.
Even though ICICI froze the account after she complained, most of the money had already been moved to 11 other accounts at Sree Padmavathi Cooperative Bank in Hyderabad. Many of these accounts were tied to fictitious identities or people who didn’t know what was going on. Here is the link to our article on Banksy Lighthouse Mystery.
Who Is Responsible for the Losses?
The case has shown that there were serious mistakes in the rules and procedures. The police looked into the matter and found that eight of the eleven accounts had fake addresses. Some of the people who had accounts included a widow, a rickshaw driver, and a carpenter. Most of them didn’t know their accounts were being used in fraud.
Police arrested Samudrala Venkateshwaralu, the former head of Sree Padmavathi Cooperative Bank, in May for allegedly aiding in setting up mule accounts. He is still in jail because he was denied bail because of the “far-reaching impact of cyber fraud.”
Are banks doing enough to keep their customers safe?
If fraud happens because of a consumer mistake, the Reserve Bank of India’s 2017 policy says that the customer is fully responsible. The banking ombudsman threw out her allegations against HDFC and ICICI because of this regulation.
But the victim and a lot of other people say that digital banking has gotten ahead of banks’ systems for finding risks. They want changes that will make sure customers are responsible while also making sure that institutions are safe, especially as cybercrime gets smarter.
Final Thoughts
This case shows how a digital arrest scam may ruin victims’ lives and finances, and it also shows how weak India’s digital banking protections are. As cybercriminals get more daring, businesses need to focus on being responsible, making fraud detection systems better, and protecting customers better. Victims may continue to suffer both loss and silence until systemic reforms are enacted.
