A septuagenarian, who is a retired Tahsildar, is among the latest victims of ‘digital arrest’ scam in Coimbatore. He was duped of ₹40 lakh.
According to the police, a fraudster contacted the elderly man posing as a law enforcement officer and stated that his Aadhaar number was linked to fraudulent transactions.
Threatening the complainant with digital arrest, the impersonator asked him to transact money in his bank account for verification by the Reserve Bank of India. The elderly man sent the money to the account numbers given by the imposter in multiple transactions. He approached the cybercrime station in Coimbatore city on Wednesday after realising that it was a scam.
In one of the digital arrest scam cases reported last year, an elderly woman living alone in a prime locality in the city remained in her house over a day after scamsters threatened her with digital arrest. The woman did not open the door when her brother visited the house, after she did not respond to him over the phone. The police later visited the house, convinced her that they were real police personnel and made her open the door, said a police officer.
“There is nothing called ‘digital arrest’ in the Indian criminal justice system. Fraudsters involved in the scam primarily target elderly people and the vulnerable. People should stop responding to such calls and inform the police, so that such numbers can be reported as ‘spam’,” said Inspector R. Kavitha Lakshmi of cybercrime station, Coimbatore city.
