How a mid-20s woman lost Rs 1.5 lakh after a 5-hour ordeal with cyber scamsters

'Delhi Customs'

It was 10.30 am. The call was supposedly from the Delhi Customs Office, and the called claimed a parcel in her name containing fake ATM cards, fake passports and MDMA (a party drug) was seized at Delhi airport.

The parcel was booked to be sent to Malaysia, the caller said, giving her the receiver’s address, parcel id, transaction id number, and so on. The person, identifying himself as Kailash Chand, assistant commissioner of police, asked her to come to the Delhi police station.

Recounting what she described later as a 'traumatising experience', Sunita told The Federal: “By this time, I was getting worried, googled his name and found it on LinkedIn. For good measure, he shared his police badge no. When I told him I live in Bengaluru, he transferred me to a Delhi police hotline number.”

Video call

Sunil Kumar, allegedly head constable of Vasant Kunj police station (if googled, there is a Sunil Kumar in Vasant Kunj), appeared on the call telling her he needed to check if there were other cases against her.

On a video call with him, Sunita saw he was seated behind an official desk dressed in a policeman's outfit with the Delhi police logo in the background. “It sounded very much like it was a police station, with walkie-talkie sounds in the background,” recalled Sunita.

She could hear the person on the walkie-talkie talking about a human trafficking case against her, throwing in a case number as well.

Frozen with fear

“I was frozen with fear. Then he asked me if I knew Sanjay Singh, an HDFC official (who can also be googled). Singh had apparently taken all my details to create a new account and used it for nefarious transactions involving human trafficking. It was a huge scam that was discovered, he told me, and accused me of being in cahoots with them to take a 10 per cent cut. Flabbergasted, I protested but he said I had to prove my innocence.”

Then, a "CBI officer" Anil Yadav started to interrogate her.

By now, it was no longer a video call. Yadav began by “shouting” at the soft-spoken Sunita, scaring her out of her wits. Did she know how big a crime human trafficking is? he asked.

Sunita did feel the conversation was taking an odd turn but Yadav started to hurl accusations at her, sending her copies of an arrest warrant and court orders in her name with her Aadhaar card, which confused and frightened her.

Legal jargon

Yadav continued to threaten her saying all the evidence was against her. He threw some more legal jargon at me about a notary letter from the Reserve Bank of India, said Sunita.

“I started to think this is a legit issue and I needed to handle this. It is then he asked me to google his name Anil Yadav, and sent me his badge no. When I told him that I needed to talk to my father about it he warned me that then my father would also get implicated in this case,” she recounted.

“I can get you out by tomorrow if you cooperate with the investigation,” said Yadav. All this while, Sunita was on video and she was warned not to leave the room.

Funds transfer

This grilling went on for five-and-a-half hours, after which Yadav slid in the bomb. He told her the RBI needed to check her bank account and asked her to transfer what she had in her State Bank of India savings account to another account.

"I have an order from the RBI for you to transfer your funds to an account which will be checked by them," he told her.

Why did Sunita believe him?

“He bombarded me with a RBI confidentiality notice, arrest warrant in my name and official looking documents. They sent me a link to the Supreme Court website to check the details of my case but I was unable to open the link. I was worried I will lose my job and my family will be humiliated. He did not give me any opportunity to think this through and I transferred my money, ₹1 lakh through Google Pay and ₹50,000 through net banking,” she confessed.

More money

Yadav told her the money would be returned in two hours after the bank completed the investigation. He would start the bail process, he told her, but they would need more money.

After the call ended, a rattled Sunita talked to a friend and she realised she had been scammed.

“I never would have thought I am the kind of person who would fall for this, but they were so convincing,” said Sunita unhappily.

New epidemic in India

Veteran journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, who recently had a close shave with an online scam, calls it a “faint manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome”, where you come to believe the caller on the other end.

Calling cyber crime the “new epidemic” in India, he said: “These scamsters make up all kinds of stories. They con women saying their son has been caught in a rape case. Another friend was trapped while asked to update their KYC details after their return from America. They ended up losing ₹10 lakh.”

These con artists speak decent English and are well trained, pointed out Nilanjan.

In his view, these online scams are rampant because we live in an atmosphere where we believe the government can go to any extent. “The public has to be educated about the clear-cut SOPs in place that investigating agencies follow. There should be a system where the investigating officer must establish his or her credentials in physical form. This information must run in all channels; no less than our Home Minister should publicise that no law enforcing agency conduct online interrogations,” he said.

No online police interrogations

In a chat with The Federal, Umesh Kumar, police inspector at Shivajinagar Cyber Economic Wing (CEN) police station in Bengaluru, confirmed that cops never conduct online investigations.

“People should know this. Also, in such conversations pause and talk to someone and never share account details,” advised Umesh.

Pointing out that it is the well-educated, English-speaking people who are falling for these scams, he said: “Unfortunately, people are not thinking when they fall prey to these 'digital arrests' as we call them. A lot of them are women and old people."

There are eight CEN stations in Bengaluru, one each in every police division. According to reports, these CEN stations are understaffed as online scams spike.

According to Umesh, over the past year, victims have lost amounts totalling up to nearly ₹50 crore. This amount pertains to cases only reported in one police station, he clarified.

Cambodia and Vietnam

Umesh further revealed that their investigations have shown that the scamsters mostly operate from Cambodia and Vietnam. “We have found out that this scam is being operated from these two countries. They are based there and running a well-oiled set-up generating fake documents and acting like police officers. In fact, we have asked the Home Ministry and Ministry of External Affairs to help us check the list of people travelling to these countries. We are even raiding the places they are staying in,” he added.

These cyber scams took off in January 2023, he said. Though some experts feel it has come down with some kind of awareness, cyber criminals seem to find innovative narratives to scare people to part with their hard-earned money.

Do victims recover their money? Yes, 30 per cent of the time, said Umesh. Usually, the criminals quickly keep transferring the money to many mule accounts or withdraw the money from ATMs or convert them into cryptos, which make it difficult to track, he added.

How to register a cyber crime complaint?

Firstly, register a complaint with the cyber crime helpline number 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in/). The latter does not function properly and if you persist you may get through 1930.

All the details of the online scam including the fake documents are to be shared, after which you are told that the account to which your money was transferred has been frozen. There's a faint ray of hope after all the darkness. A PDF is shared which has to be taken to the police station in the area in which you live to register an FIR.

The police will start investigating the case, checking the IP addresses, money trail etc. If luck favours you and the money is still in the account, a release application has to be filed in the court to get back your money. If all this goes through, the money will be deposited back into your account.

"What is annoying is that the onus is on the victim to pursue the case. I believe the government has to investigate these scams more deeply. They need to penalise the bank that allows a scamster to open the account too," said Nilanjan, who never picks up a call from an unknown number after his ‘nightmarish ordeal’ being in "digital custody" for 28 long hours.

Deeply traumatised

For Sunita, who filed a complaint with 1930, the scamsters continued to hound her by texting and calling her. She hoped that the police could help her track them through these calls but they had no facility to do this. They simply advised her to block them.

This entire experience has left Sunita “traumatised”. She is worried sick that she had shared important information with them.

“I always wondered how people were crazy enough to fall for such obvious scams but when I was in that position, with the type of proof they were sending me, I got convinced it was legit,” she said woefully.

This is one bitter lesson that will stay with this young woman, starting out in life, making her distrustful of the world around her for a long time to come.