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In the longest-ever digital arrest, a 77-year-old woman from Mumbai has been duped of Rs. 3.8 crore by cyber fraudsters posing as an IPS officer and other law enforcement officials. The woman was kept under digital arrest for a month in a fake money laundering case and threatened with arrest. The complainant is a homemaker, who lives with her retired husband in South Mumbai. It all started with a phone call.
One fine day, the woman received a WhatsApp call stating that the parcel she had sent to Taiwan was halted. Five passports, a bank card, 4 kg of clothes and MDMA drugs have been seized, the caller claimed.
A random WhatsApp call from an unknown number was just the beginning of the cyber fraud.
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When the woman countered saying she had not sent any parcel to anyone, the caller said her Aadhaar card details had been used in the alleged crime and they would need to speak to a Mumbai police officer.
The phone call was immediately transferred to a fake police officer who backed the claim that the woman's Aadhaar card was linked to a money laundering case under investigation.
The woman was asked to download the Skype app to speak to a police officer. She was categorically asked to neither disconnect the call nor tell anyone about the case.
A man, introducing himself as IPS officer, Anand Rana, joined the call and asked for her bank account details. Soon, another man, claiming to be George Mathew, an IPS from the finance department, jumped on the call. He asked the woman to transfer money to the shared bank accounts as part of the investigation. The fraudsters posing as police officials assured her that the money would be returned if she was found innocent.
The woman was asked to keep the video call on for 24 hours. At first, Rs. 15 lakh were transferred.
If the video call got cut for any reason, the fraudsters would call her again and threaten her to turn on the video.
This continued for a month. And, the woman ended up losing nearly Rs. 4 crore.
When the money wasn't returned, the woman got suspicious and shared her ordeal with her daughter who then asked her mother to complain. It is then the matter came to the forefront.