Government cybercrime statistics indicate that in the first quarter of this year alone, Indians lost Rs 120.30 crore due to “digital arrest” frauds, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought to light on Sunday.
Digital arrests are becoming a common way of committing digital fraud, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which keeps an eye on cybercrime at the federal level through the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C). Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are three contiguous nations in southeast Asia where a large number of persons committing these scams are based.
The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) examined trends from January to April and discovered that these three nations were the origin of 46% of the cyberfrauds recorded during that time, which resulted in a total loss of an estimated Rs 1,776 crore for the victims.
7.4 lakh complaints were filed between January 1 and April 30 of this year, according to data from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), compared to 15.56 lakh complaints received during 2023. In 2022, 9.66 lakh complaints were filed, compared to 4.52 lakh the year before.
According to I4C, there are four types of scams: digital arrest, trading scam, investment scam (task-based), and romance/dating scam. “We found that Indians lost Rs 120.30 crore in digital arrest, Rs 1,420.48 crore in trading scam, Rs 222.58 crore in investment scam, and Rs 13.23 crore in romance/dating scam,” Chief Executive Officer (I4C) Rajesh Kumar had said while releasing the January-April data in May.
Potential victims of digital arrest would receive a call informing them that they were the intended beneficiaries or that they had sent a package containing drugs, illicit products, counterfeit passports, or other contraband.
The target’s friends or family may occasionally be informed that the target has been implicated in a crime.
The thieves would use Skype or another video conferencing tool to get in touch with the target, who would be carefully selected, after they had them in their net. They would call from locations that resembled police stations or government offices, dress like law enforcement agents, and demand money in exchange for a “compromise” and “closure of the case.”
In some instances, the victims were “digitally arrested,” meaning they had to remain in the scammers’ line of sight until their demands were satisfied.
After examining its NCRP data, inputs from states and Union Territories, and some open-source data, I4C focused on Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
“The cybercrime operations based in these countries employ a comprehensive array of deceptive strategies, including recruitment efforts by exploiting social media to lure Indians with fake employment opportunities,” Kumar said.
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