Mumbai woman put under month-long 'digital arrest'

Mumbai: A 77-year-old woman from south Mumbaiwas held in ‘digital custody’ for over a month in what is believed to be the city’s longest case of cyber fraudsters posing as law enforcement officials. Threatened with arrest in a fake money laundering case, the accused duped her of Rs 3.8 crore, said the police.

The complainant, a homemaker, lives with her retired husband (75) in the city while her two children are abroad.

Police said she first received a WhatsApp call. The caller told her the parcel she had sent to Taiwan had been stopped and it contained five passports, a bank card, 4 kg of clothes, MDMA drugs, and so on. The woman told the caller she had not sent any parcel to anyone. The caller then said her Aadhaar card details were used in the crime and asked her to talk to a Mumbai police officer. The call was transferred to a fake police officer who said her Aadhaar card was linked to a money laundering case which was under investigation, though she denied any involvement in it.

“The complainant was then asked to download the Skype app and told that the police officers would talk to her through it. She was ordered not to disconnect and not to tell anyone about the case. A man posing as Anand Rana, IPS officer, sought details of her bank accounts. Later, another man claiming to be George Mathew, IPS, from the finance department, came on the call and asked her to transfer money into bank accounts given by them so that they could probe it. They told her the money would be returned to her if found to be ‘clear’,” said a police officer. The accused also sent her a fake Mumbai crime branch notice with a police logo.

The accused asked the woman to continue her WhatsApp video call 24x7. She switched on the video call on her family computer. “If the complainant disconnected the call or it got disconnected, the accused would call her up and ask her to connect again and keep checking her location,” said a police officer.

She was then instructed to go to the bank and transfer money and told if the bank inquired why she needed it, she could tell them that she wanted to buy a property.

She transferred the money and the accused returned Rs 15 lakh into her account, saying it was clear. By returning the money, they gained her trust. They then asked her to send all her money from her and her husband’s joint accounts. Over a period of time, she transferred Rs 3.8 crore into six bank accounts.

The complainant suspected something was amiss when she did not get her money back while the accused kept demanding more funds for taxes and to “clear” the money while keeping her under “voluntary surveillance”. She called her daughter who told her she was being conned and asked her to approach the police. She dialled the 1930 cyber helpline. Investigators have frozen six bank accounts of the accused.