MUMBAI: Acting on a tip-off, when the South Cyber police arrived at the Grant Road home of a 75-year-old to protect him from a fake cop or digital arrest scam on July 25, the victim refused them entry choosing to call the fraudsters instead for advice. It took much persuasion and coordination between the local police and members of the housing society to turn the tide.Senior citizen in digital fraud of ₹1.64 Crore puts real cops in a bindCitizens of Mumbai have lost around ₹155 crore to digital arrest scams in 2025 alone, a 33 percent surge over the previous year, with many cases involving vulnerable seniors.The cyber cops were acting on information that the senior citizen had transferred ₹1.64 crore in tranches to various bank accounts between June 8 and July 25. But when they arrived at his door to restrain him from making further payments, the septuagenarian thought they were fake cops. He shut them out and made a WhatsApp video call to the people he had been interacting with and to whom he had been remitting money.The impersonators emphasised that they were the real cops and those at his door were imposters.“Despite the team’s repeated urging, he refused to open the door,” said a police officer attached to South Cyber police station. “We had received information from the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) that a few bank accounts which were already frozen were receiving more money from a particular person’s bank account. The person was identified and traced to Grant Road in Mumbai.”Failing a breakthrough, the cyber police team in plain clothes then summoned uniformed policemen from the local police station and members of the housing society to gain access to the senior citizen’s residence. The senior citizen finally relented when three members of the society and a team of uniformed cops, who brought along another victim of cyber fraud, spelled out the reality for him.Earlier, police had learnt that the accused were in touch with the victim, a retired executive, and had approached them as ATS officers -- identified as Shreekant Kumar and Ashok Kumar -- from Pune. To gain his confidence they sent him photo copies of their identity cards on WhatsApp.“The frauds told him that fake bank accounts had been opened in his name and money from Hitesh Mehta’s money laundering case—the New India Co-operative Bank fraud—was transferred to those accounts,” the police officer said, adding that on a video call, the fake ATS officer appeared in uniform and threatened the senior citizen.Threatening him with arrest periodically, they took money from him claiming that the entire amount will be returned after checking that the money was not from the fraud, said the officer.The South Cyber police have registered a case under sections 308 (extortion), 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation), 339 (using a forged document or electronic record as genuine) and 61 (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, against the unknown frauds and are trying to identify and trace them through the banking trail.