Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged people to be aware about the psychological pressure tactics used by fraudsters in digital arrest scams and said that the government had taken a whole of government approach to curb the menace. Modi, in his Mann Ki Baat radio programme, also advised people to use a “stop, think and act” technique to counter scammers if they receive any such calls.
“People from every class and age group fall victim to digital arrest. People have lost lakhs of rupees earned through their hard work, out of sheer fear. Whenever you receive such a call, don’t be scared. You should be aware that no investigative agency ever inquires like this through a phone call or a video call,” Modi said in the 115th episode of Mann Ki Baat.
“Thousands of such fraudulent video calling IDs have been blocked by the agencies. Lakhs of SIM cards, mobile phones and bank accounts have also been blocked. Agencies are doing their job, but for protection from scams in the name of digital arrest, it is very important that everyone is aware, every citizen is aware,” he said.
He said that there is no legal concept of a “digital arrest”. “[T]his is just fraud, deceit, it is a lie, a gang of criminals and those who are doing this are enemies of society,” he added.
Modi explained the modus operandi used by the fraudsters: first, use victim’s personal information so that the recipient of the call believes that it is a genuine call from a government or a law enforcement agency such as the police, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), customs department, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), etc.
In many calls, the perpetrators call the victim and pretend a parcel, intended for the victim, has been intercepted for containing illegal goods or drugs. They may also pretend that a person close to the victim is involved in a crime and thus the victim is being placed under “digital arrest” and must remain visually available over Skype or another video conferencing platform till their demands are met.
Second, they create an atmosphere of fear. “Uniform, government office set-up, legal sections. They will scare you so much on the phone. In the midst of the conversation, you will not be able to even think,” he said.
Third, create time pressure. “‘You have to decide now or else you will be arrested.’ These people create so much of psychological pressure on the victim that one gets scared,” Modi said.
‘Stop, think, act to counter it’: Modi
To counter it, Modi said that people should not be scared when they get such calls. The first step is to “stop”. “As soon as you get a call, stop. Don’t panic, stay calm, don’t take any hasty steps, don’t give away your personal information to anyone. If possible, take a screenshot and record it,” he said.
Second is to “think”. “No government agency threatens you on the phone like this, neither inquires nor demands money on a video call like this. If you feel scared, then know that something is wrong,” he said.
And third is to “act” by reporting it on the national cyber helpline 1930, on the portal cybercrime.gov.in, informing family and police, and preserving evidence.
Whole of government approach to tackle the issue
Modi highlighted the whole of government approach that the government had adopted to deal with this, including setting up the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.
Departments and agencies involved in investigating these crimes include the home ministry (via I4C), IT ministry, department of telecommunications (DoT), department of financial services (DFS), department of economic affairs (DEA), department of revenue (DOR), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), TRAI, and multiple banks and payment service providers along with telcos and social media companies.
This month, the DoT operationalised the “International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System” in two phases that can detect and block spam international calls that display Indian numbers as the caller ID. In cases involving digital arrests, calls are often made from international numbers that appear as Indian numbers on the victims’ phones. At the telco level, this system blocks 3 to 3.2 million calls a day.
In the second phase, the DoT and the TSPs built an integrated system that identified and blocked 13.5 million incoming international calls with Indian phone numbers as spoofed calls within 24 hours of commencement of operations.
On May 14, the I4C had issued an alert, warning citizens about “digital arrests”. “This is an organised online economic crime and is learnt to be operated by cross-border crime syndicates,” it had then said.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in a report titled “Transnational Organised Crime and the Convergence of Cyber-Enabled Fraud, Underground Banking and Technological Innovation in Southeast Asia: A Shifting Threat Landscape” released earlier this month, noted these kinds of digital arrests, which the report calls “law enforcement impersonation” are becoming common across Southeast Asia. It noted that Chinese embassies across the world had issued warnings to its citizens about this as had Thailand’s Central Investigation bureau. In June 2024, Singapore authorities recorded 63 such cases with total losses of over US$8.1 million.
In the May alert, I4C had said that it, in collaboration with Microsoft, had got more than 1,000 Skype IDs blocked that were involved in “digital arrests”. The I4C is working with Microsoft to evolve a system using machine learning and artificial intelligence to track Skype IDs that misuse official logos in their display pictures, I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar had said on May 22.
At that time, Kumar had said that until May, in cases involving digital arrest, the police had not seen use of AI-generated voices or faces to scam victims.
Personal data abused to target victims
On May 22, Kumar had explained that such crimes rely on social engineering for which the criminals depend both on breached personal data as well as the wealth of personal data and details of relationships that people make publicly available on social media platforms.
“Actually, we are careless about posting things on social media. Our suggestion would be that you do not reveal a lot on social media. Even if you want to reveal, put controls on who can view your position, your posts, or your connections. Do not display your phone numbers. Do not display your relationships,” Kumar had said.
In certain cases, especially those involving women, victims are also blackmailed using non-consensual intimate imagery, Shubham Singh, a cybersecurity consultant who regularly works with the Maharashtra Police, said.
“In a case that I worked on, a victim fell for the ruse. The fraudsters told her to remove her clothes for ‘body mark identification’ over a video call. The fraudsters recorded the video and sent it to her via WhatsApp to blackmail her. She then contacted me and I told her to either temporarily disable all her social media accounts or to make them private. I told her to report the crime to cybercrime.gov.in or to visit the nearest cyber cell. Luckily, she had used a scarf to cover her face in the video,” Singh said.
