‘You are under digital arrest’: Inside a scam looting millions from Indians

For a terrible fortnight in August, Ruchika Tandon, a 44-year-old physician at one of India’s best hospitals, was ensnared in what felt like a high-stakes national murder investigation.

However, it was a sophisticated fraud, one where the scammers manipulated every move of her and spent her and her mother’s life benefits.

Dr. Tandon was forced to take a sick leave from work, surrender her daily freedoms, and follow orders from phone-inquisitors who convinced her that she was the subject of a serious investigation while pretending to be a “digital arrest” ( a term her perpetrators had fabricated ).

Fraudsters use fraudulent arrest warrants, video calls, and pressure on victims to move large sums of money in the “digital imprisonment” scam.

In Dr Tandon’s case, they stripped her and her family of nearly 25m rupees ($ 300, 000, £235, 000 ) across bank accounts, mutual funds, pension funds, and life insurance- years of savings lost in a manufactured nightmare.

She is not alone. Indians lost over 1,200m rupees to “digital arrest” hoaxes between January and April this year, according to official figures. These figures only scratch the surface, as many victims don’t report such crimes. Stolen funds are often funnelled into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency wallets. More than 40% of the scams have been traced back to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, according to officials.

Things are so bad that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about the scam in his monthly radio talk in October.

” Whenever you receive such a call, do n’t be scared. No investigative company ever makes such an inquiry via a phone call or video call, he warned.

India is the victim of a variety of cybercrimes, ranging from dating scams to fake dealing and investments. But the “digital arrest” scam stands out as particularly sophisticated and sinister- properly planned, continuous, and intrusive to every part of a victim’s life.

Scammers occasionally reveal themselves through video calls, but other times they stay hidden, relying only on music. The tale could have been a Bollywood movie straight out of the box, but it was carefully choreographed.

On that fateful first evening, scammers posing as representatives from India’s telecoms regulation called Lucknow-based Dr Tandon, claiming her amount may be disconnected due to” 22 problems” of harassing emails sent from it.

A man who claimed to be a senior police officer took control shortly after. He accused her of laundering cash for child trafficking and people through a joint bank account with her family.

In the background, a jarring chorus of voices echoed,” Assault her, jail her”!

” You will be made to assault by the police in five hours,” you are told. All officers stations have been alerted”, the gentleman warned.

” I was angry and frustrated. I kept saying this ca n’t be true”, Dr Tandon recalls.

The officer seemed to lighten, but with a find. He said India’s federal detective agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI ), would take over as it was a “matter of national secrecy”.

” I’ll try to talk to them and inspire them not to take your natural prison.” But you have to be in electronic custody”, he insisted.

Dr. Tandon could n’t get started by using a feature phone that did n’t support video calling. So they made her travel to a laptop shop and make her pay.

Over the next six weeks, three people and a girl, posing as police officers and a prosecutor, kept her under continual monitoring on Skype, with her cellphone camera running everyday.

To keep the scam going, they forced her to wake up her students at night to purchase additional data packs. She had to keep track of her every move by using the phone all over the house, including when she cooked, slept, and even outside the bathroom.

She was also forced to fabricate a false identity to tell to her family and hospital that she was too ill to work or meet anyone. When an uncle visited, they ordered her to hide under a bed, with the phone camera running.

For a full week, Dr Tandon endured more 700 questions on her life and work, a staged trial, falsified court documents, and promises of a digital “bail” in exchange for her life savings. She was told to” show respect to the judge” in the fake court, where she was strutting her white suit. The callers had turned off the video, leaving only their fake names and authentic badges on empty screens.

At one point, during the ordeal, the scammers even talked to Dr Tandon’s 70-year-old mother, urging her to stay silent” for her daughter’s sake”.

When the doctor repeatedly broke down on camera, the scammers told her:” Take a deep breath and relax. You have not committed a murder. You have just laundered money”.

She transferred her entire savings from a dozen different bank accounts to those controlled by the scammers in a desperate attempt to escape punishment, believing she would receive a refund following “government verification.” Instead, she lost everything. After the transfer was finished, the callers disconnected the line.

Back at work after a week, exhaustion drove Dr Tandon to search terms like “digital custody” and “new CBI investigation methods” on the internet.

This resulted in newspaper articles about national “digital arrest” scams. She had rushed to the police station in the hopes that” the police station and officers were real, but she had still refused to accept that she had been the victim of an elaborate hoax.”

Dr Tandon says she approached the police station, anxious.

” I’ve been receiving strange calls for days”, she started, trying to explain.

Before she could say more, a woman officer interrupted sharply,” Have you transferred any money”?

At another police station,” the moment they heard my case, they began laughing”, Dr Tandon recalls.

” This is very common now”, a policeman said.

Over 500km ( 310 miles ) away in Delhi, author and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay narrowly escaped the scam in July.

He was subject to “digital arrest” for 28 hours as swindlers claimed his dissolved bank account had been used to launder money. When a caller called Mr. Mukhopadhyay, who is not typically a police officer, inquired on the phone, asked why he had n’t redeemed his mutual funds, his suspicions grew.

Mr. Mukhopadhyay slipped out of his study and spoke briefly to his wife, where scammers had been monitoring him on his desktop. Friends, alerted by his message, quickly asked her to disconnect his modem, freeing him from their grip.

” I became a digital slave until my friends exposed the scam”, says Mr Mukhopadhyay. ” I had moved my funds into my account, ready to transfer it all to them. When it was over, I was like a fool.

Many victims are frustrated by slow-moving complaint procedures, which keep the progress on catching these scammers a secret.

Dr Tandon, however, has seen some success: police have arrested 18 suspects, including a woman, from across India. A third of the stolen money has been recovered in different bank accounts in the form of cash. The 25 million rupees that were recovered from her looted money have been returned to her for only 1.2 million of the money.

According to Deepak Kumar Singh, the con artists were conducting a sophisticated operation.

” The scammers are educated men and women- fluent in English and various Indian languages- including engineering graduates, cyber security experts, and banking professionals. Most operate through Telegram channels”, Mr Singh, a senior police official, told the BBC.

The scammers were clever, using targeted information from their victims ‘ social media, investigators believe.

” They track you, gather personal information, and identify your weaknesses”, says Mr Singh. ” Then they strike quickly, using a hit-and-run approach with potential victims”.

The scammers knew Mr Mukhopadhyay was a journalist and writer – author of a biography on Prime Minister Modi. They knew Dr Tandon was a doctor and had attended a conference in Goa. They had their biometric national identity numbers. Mr Mukhopadhyay wonders if they were aware he was among the journalists whose house was raided by Delhi police in October 2023 as part of an investigation into the funding of NewsClick (Critics had deplored the move as an attack on press freedom, a charge the government denied.)

They also made errors. Mr Mukhopadhyay’s caller was unaware of how long it typically took to redeem funds, which raised his suspicions. Dr. Tandon’s phony judge posed with a picture of former Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud and titled himself Judge Dhananjay. Yet, overwhelmed by the moment, she missed the clue.

Dr. Tandon claims that she is still struggling to separate reality from the nightmare that took her life. Even when she filed the police complaint, she wondered,” Was the police station also fake”?

Every phone call stirs fresh anxiety.

” At work, I sometimes go blank, filled with fears. Days are better, but after dusk, it becomes hard. I get nightmares”.