Cyber criminals have duped an Indian Institute of Technology-Jodhpur assistant professor of nearly Rs12 lakh ($19,000) after holding her under “digital arrest” for 12 days.
NDTV reported that digital (house) arrest, or virtual restraint of individuals, is the latest tactic employed by cybercriminals in India to trap victims in their homes and defraud them.
The scammers use AI-generated voice or video calls to impersonate law enforcement officials and create fear by falsely accusing people of wrongdoing, generally related to their national identity card or phone number.
In the recent incident, cyber criminals, posing as Mumbai Crime Branch officials, told IIT Jodhpur’s Assistant Professor Amrita Puri that she was a suspect in a money laundering case.
They called her and said a parcel belonging to her had arrived in Mumbai in which drugs, passports and credit cards were found. The men added that she will have to remain under surveillance until she is cleared of any offence. Otherwise, she would be arrested.
Ms Puri, who is from Punjab and lives on the IIT campus in Jodhpur, a city in Rajasthan, told police that she received several calls from different numbers on Aug 1.
“When I took the call, the caller introduced himself as a policeman,” she said. “He told me that drugs have been found in a parcel sent to me. It also had many passports and credit cards.
“He told me to report the incident to the Mumbai Cyber Crime Branch and himself transferred the call to the department.”
“There, a person introduced himself as the deputy commissioner of police and said: ‘You are trapped in a money laundering case. So you have to cooperate, otherwise you will be arrested and sent to jail.’ I got scared and kept doing whatever those people told me to do.”
According to police, the scammers kept the assistant professor under constant surveillance. Police did not, however, explain why the process of procuring her personal and banking details was drawn out for so many days.
“The cyber criminals took control of her mobile phone, kept the camera on and shared the screen. Her laptop was also brought under control through the Skype app, a police officer told NDTV. “The professor could not even contact anyone.
“They intimidated her and made her transfer money to them, telling her she would be let free if she does so.”
Ms Puri, who was placed under surveillance from Aug 1, gave her bank details to the criminals nine days later.
The gang then transferred around Rs12 lakh from her Yes Bank account through Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS).
RGTS is a system that allows for continuous and real-time settlement of fund transfers on a transaction-by-transaction basis.
Soon after the money was transferred, the gang freed Ms Puri from “digital arrest”.
Later, the assistant professor realised she had been duped, and informed the police.
Sub-Inspector Mahendra Kumar told NDTV that police are trying to find out which account the money was transferred to and how the gang managed to pocket it.
This incident comes in the wake of a group of scammers posing as CBI officers targeting a Lucknow writer-poet on July 7.
They kept him under digital arrest for six hours, until a relative suspected foul play and called the police.
