Cyber fraudsters posing as Delhi ATS and Jammu & Kashmir police personnel cheated an elderly woman from Mumbai of Rs 22 lakh after accusing her of spying for Pakistan, officials said on Wednesday.
A retired banker in Delhi lost his entire life savings, amounting to Rs 23 crore, to cyber fraudsters who posed as ED and CBI officers. The victim was kept under 'digital arrest' for over a month and forced to transfer funds under duress.
'Big Week For #USIndia Law Enforcement Collaboration'
Some online fraudsters got their target and timing horribly wrong on Sunday after they attempted to 'digitally arrest' a senior police official with an automated call over 'credit card misuse' while he was addressing a press conference in Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
A mechanical engineer in Faridabad was held 'digitally' hostage for six days by cyber fraudsters who duped him of Rs 3.46 lakh. The fraudsters forced him to lock himself in a room and monitored his activities through his mobile camera. They convinced him that he was involved in a drug smuggling operation and threatened him with legal action. The victim eventually realized the scam when the fraudsters forgot to switch off their mics and started talking to each other. Police have registered an FIR and are investigating the matter.
The advisory depicted the logos of social media platforms like WhatsApp and Skype to showcase that calls for such scams are made using such platforms.
Digital house arrest is a tactic where cybercriminals confine victims to their homes in order to scam them. The offenders generate fear by making audio or video calls, frequently posing as law enforcement officers using AI-generated voices or video technology.
As per the advisory of cyber-security agency CERT-In, a digital arrest is the one in which victims receive a phone call, an e-mail or a message claiming they are under investigation for illegal activities, such as identity theft or money laundering.
The CBI has significantly increased the rate of fugitive repatriation, bringing back 134 individuals in the last five years, doubling the number from the previous decade. This success is attributed to enhanced diplomatic efforts, technological advancements, and improved coordination with Interpol.
Seventeen persons, including four hailing from Taiwan, were arrested by Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch for allegedly operating a nationwide 'digital arrest' racket, a Gujarat police official said on Monday.
The number of cyberfraud cases has skyrocketed from 2,677 in 1999-2000 to 29,082 in FY24 -- more than a 10-fold increase. The RBI pegs digital payment frauds at Rs 1,457 crore in FY24, up more than five times in a year. It's not just the number of frauds. What's alarming is the growing sophistication of the fraudsters, exposing the vulnerabilities within the financial system, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The victim, who had a keen interest in stock market investments, was lured by fraudsters with promises of hefty returns on investments in stocks.
UPI-related frauds have accounted for a cumulative loss of Rs 2,145 crore across 2.7 million reported incidents.
The fundamental responsibility for preventing such crimes and for bringing the criminals to justice rests with the State, and it cannot abdicate that function.
The police received over 500 complaints alleging that many social media influencers and YouTubers promoted the HIBOX mobile application on their pages and lured people into investing through the app, the officer said.
What is digital house arrest? It is a tactic cybercriminals use to confine victims to their homes and scam them, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
According to the police, the accused persons collected data, such as phone numbers and personal data from a portal, and the employees of the call centre randomly made calls using VoIP to US citizens.
The GST intelligence unit detected tax evasion of more than Rs 1.98 lakh crore last year and arrested 140 masterminds who were involved in defrauding the exchequer, the finance ministry said on Thursday. In 2023, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) detected significant GST evasion in diverse sectors like online gaming, casinos, insurance and secondment (import of manpower services). "DGGI has achieved an increase in detection of cases of evasion and voluntary payments. In 2023, DGGI detected 6,323 cases involving evasion of duty of Rs 1,98,324 crore with a voluntary payment of Rs 28,362 crore.
With the solar panel scam continuing to turn the heat on Kerala's Congress-led United Democratic Front government, telephone call details gathered by investigators showed that several ministers and political leaders had made calls to the prime accused in the case Saritha Nair, apart from getting frequent calls from her.
Mastermind Shrinivas Rao Dadi, 49, who has sound technical knowledge despite limited education, was taken into custody by a team of Bangur Nagar police station from a plush hotel in Hyderabad, the official said.
The new powers are aimed at making Sebi more effective in protecting investor interest and helping it to better regulate the market.
Fraudsters in Himachal Pradesh minted a series of a cryptocoins -- two of which were KRO and DGT -- to cheat thousands of investors of more than Rs 200 crore over a period of five years, beginning in 2018 -- the year the crypto reached fever pitch.
A pan-India 'fraud-to-phone' network has been busted by security agencies, which have also arrested eight people and seized nearly 300 new mobile phones bought with stolen funds, officials said on Tuesday. Moreover, 900 mobile phones, 1,000 bank accounts and hundreds of unified payment interface (UPI) and e-commerce IDs of this gang have been identified and are under investigation. Nearly 100 bank accounts, and debit and credit cards have been frozen by the security agencies so far, officials said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested a man for allegedly altering Aadhaar card details to withdraw Provident Funds of unsuspecting persons through online claims, officials said on Monday.
'Avoid rushing into any financial transactions or disclosing personal information.'
Some of the celebrities whose names and details were used by the fraudsters are Abhishek Bachchan, Shilpa Shetty, Madhuri Dixit, Emraan Hashmi and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) of Shahadra Rohit Meena said.
'This year's detection of frauds and probable recovery will be mainly driven by several compliance measures put in place, and amendments made to the GST regime to plug revenue leakages particularly in new-edge sectors.'
Anirudha Kalkote, 24, was produced before a US magistrate in Houston on Friday to face the charges.
The Indian-American community in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tristate area is being targeted by telephone fraudsters.
In addition to educating Delhiites and holding a joint awareness campaign against cyber frauds, Truecaller will also display official numbers of the Delhi police representatives on the app's government directory services.
A look at ten of America's most famous fraudsters, and how they were dealth with by US courts of law.
The 35-year-old Gabrial, one among four Romanians accused in the robbery in which a large number of persons lost their money from their accounts, was taken into custody on transit remand from a court in Mumbai.
A massive data breach that has implications for national security was unearthed by the Cyberabad Police in Hyderabad, who arrested seven people of a gang allegedly involved in the theft and sale of sensitive data of the government and important organisations, including details of defence personnel as well as the personal and confidential data of about 16.8 crore citizens.
Six years after the rollout of the biggest indirect tax reform in India, Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue of Rs 1.5 lakh crore every month has become a new normal and tax officers are focusing on dealing with fraudsters who are adopting newer modus operandi to game the system, causing loss to the exchequer. To apprehend black sheep, who operate as syndicates and create fake entities on the basis of forged documents to claim input tax credit (ITC), tax officers have started using data analytics, artifical intelligence and machine learning aiming to curb evasion, which was over Rs 3 lakh crore since inception of GST. It was over Rs 1 lakh crore in 2022-23. Thinktank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said the most critical pending GST reform is upgradation of GST Network to prevent fake supplies and fraudulent claims of Input Tax Credit (ITC).
In the year-long crackdown on tax evasion, the GST authorities have unearthed over Rs 35,000 crore of tax fraud committed by misuse of input tax credit provision under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. During the 2020-21 financial year, the CGST zones and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) booked about 8,000 cases involving fake ITC of over Rs 35,000 crore, a statement from CBIC said. Under the GST regime, at the time of paying tax on output, entities can reduce the tax they have already paid on inputs.
This provision is a very smart rule against fraudster and would not affect any genuine business entities or Ease of Doing Business in any manner, said a source.
An Indian national from Gurgaon has been sentenced to three years in federal imprisonment on charges of call centre fraud that intended to cheat Americans of millions of dollars, a US attorney said.
Prompt measures and legal actions taken by the Indian government and PNB helped in securing the extradition of diamantaire Nirav Modi by the UK on Friday, a senior official said. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel on Friday signed off on the order to extradite Nirav Modi, wanted in India on fraud and money laundering charges related to the estimated USD 2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case. According to the government official, a scam of this magnitude had potential to create instability in the financial sector but the deft handling saved the entire public sector banking space from the crisis and litigation.
Kapoor has told the Enforcement Directorate that he was 'forced' to buy the M F Husain painting from Priyanka Gandhi and the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New York, according to the charge sheet filed by the federal anti-money laundering agency in a special court in Mumbai.
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