Digital Arrest – A Serious Threat

We have all been reading about cyber attacks for quite some time now. Siphoning off money from the bank accounts of unsuspecting people is now part and parcel of our lives. With more and more people using digital means for making payments, more and more people are exposing their bank accounts to fraudsters through their mobile phones. Apart from this, even credit cards are being hacked with impunity.

As if all this was not enough, we now have the latest scam that is taking the world by storm — “digital arrest”. As per news reports, in India, citizens lost around ₹120 crore to digital arrest frauds in the first quarter of 2024, and according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), digital arrests have become a prevalent method of digital fraud. Many of those carrying out these frauds are based in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.

So, what is “digital arrest”? In simple terms, it is a scam that thrives on the common man’s lack of knowledge and information about how regulators / government agencies work. Most people are not aware of how the police, the CBI, the tax department, or the Enforcement Department operate and how they carry out their investigations. Crooks take advantage of this lack of awareness and play on the human psyche by impersonating such official agencies.

In a “Digital Arrest” scam, the perpetrators leverage