“Fear-based” scam wreaks havoc in India

Sometimes a scam is as simple as a phone call. A year ago, one call was enough to rob Kamta Prasad Singh of his savings, yet another victim of a worrying wave of “online arrest” scams plaguing India. “I am ruined,” confides this retired teacher from the state of Bihar (north-east), on the verge of tears. “I lost sleep, I’m no longer hungry…”. For Kamta Prasad Singh, the nightmare began with a phone call from a man posing as an official of the national telecommunications regulatory authority.

Peremptorily, his interlocutor tells him that his Aadhaar – a 12-digit number based on biometrics which allows each citizen of the most populous country in the world to be identified – has been misused to make fraudulent payments. “He told me that the Maharashtra (state) police were on their way to arrest me,” he recalls. Kamta Prasad Singh is then asked to join a video call on WhatsApp. There, a man in a police uniform tells him to make a “temporary” bank transfer to regularize his situation. Terrified, he complies and ends up losing the equivalent of 15,000 francs. The 62-year-old retiree has been inconsolable ever since.

“For years, I avoided taking my tea outside, I walked so as not to have to pay for public transport,” laments Kamta Prasad Singh, “I know how I put money into side”. This false identity fraud is wreaking havoc in India. The latest available statistics identified 17,470 “cyber” crimes and offenses in 2022, including 6,491 online banking frauds. Authorities are concerned about the increasing number of cases where scammers pose as police officers to extort money from their victims.

To establish their credibility, they hack the real Aadhaar numbers of their victims on the internet. “They are very successful in convincing people,” notes Sushil Kumar, a Bihar police officer specializing in cyber fraud. “They also know how to find on the internet the details of the functioning of state agencies which make them credible.” Last year, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was moved by these scams “based on fear” and had promised the cooperation of all the police in the country “to fight against these frauds”. So far, they are struggling to hinder the ingenuity and audacity of scammers.

In December 2023, writer Kaveri (name changed to protect her anonymity), 71, was deceived by a man posing as an agent for the American delivery giant FedEx. He tells her that a package, notably loaded with drugs and sent in his name, was intercepted and that an alleged accomplice accuses him of money laundering, before passing him a “police officer”. As “proof” of his identity, the man shows him his real Aadhaar number. “They wanted me to send them money,” describes Kaveri. Convinced by letters on letterhead from the Central Bank or the federal police (CBI), she ended up sending them nearly 132,000 francs.

Ruined, she has since had to leave her home and is now suspicious of everyone. “On my phone, I have more blocked numbers than authentic contacts,” sighs the septuagenarian. While he rails against the insufficient security of banking transactions, police officer Kumar also deplores the gullibility of the victims in a country where digitalization has progressed by leaps and bounds. “Knowledge and discernment (of the general public) have made progress, but there is still much to do,” he believes. A healthcare assistant, Meeta was trapped like Kaveri, at the same time.

In his case, another real-fake “police officer” asked him, to prove his innocence, to click on a loan application via his bank’s mobile phone application. Her interlocutor called her from a place that “looked like a police station, with noises from walkie-talkies,” defends the young woman from Bengaluru, whose first name has been changed. Threatened, she gave in and requested a loan of 200,000 rupees (2,000 francs) which she immediately transferred to an unknown account. Even though she filed a police report, she was forced to repay the loan. She has since lost all confidence in her bank and condemns fraudsters to “absolute hell”.