Shatabdi Biswas woke up to a call on a smog-filled December morning in Delhi in 2022. In the next two hours, although she was no stranger to the Internet, she lost almost all the money she had in her bank accounts.

“What bothered me the most was that I sent them the money,” she said, sitting in a coffee shop as she relived the traumatic morning nearly two years ago.

“This is how I twist your mind beyond reason. I’m using your fear against you until you send all your money.”

The 37-year-old content writer was describing a version of the “digital arrest” scam that has garnered national attention in recent months.

The crime involves a fraudster posing as a law enforcement official – often a police or customs officer – who informs an unsuspecting victim that his identity has been used in illegal activities.

For the next several hours, the victim is manipulated and held under a false “arrest” call until he surrenders his savings.

Biswas is one of the millions who will fall for this type of scam in India.

India’s Cybercrime Coordination Center (I4C), a central agency working under the Ministry of Home Affairs, reported an average of 7,000 cybercrime complaints every day in the first four months of 2024 alone.

This includes not only digital arrest scams, but also several other types of online fraud, such as job, investment or romance scams, as well as online phishing. Victims are estimated to have lost around 17.5 billion rupiah (€192 million, $207 million) as a result.

“What is worrying is that the high rate of complaints is not the full picture. Many do not report it because they do not know the procedures or are ashamed of being duped,” said Arun Kumar Verma, an official in the police’s cyber crime department. from Delhi.

“Sorry, it was a scam”

In 2022, an unsuspecting Shatabdi Biswas received an interactive voice response (IVR) call that directed her to what she thought was FedEx customer service.

The person on the other end informed her that a package containing marijuana, expired passports and fake credentials had been sent to Taiwan using her identity.

They even gave her the correct details of her Aadhaar card – an identity document issued by the Indian government – ​​which is linked to banking and other digital services.

“They put me in touch with a customs official in Mumbai who had all my details. He even had a Marathi accent. Nothing seemed out of place,” she told DW, adding that this kind of elaborate scam was heard of by less than a few years. ago.

The bogus officer ordered Biswas not to speak to anyone else during the “investigation” and spun the network of a criminal organization that stole other people’s identities to smuggle goods into Taiwan.

“He sent me articles and pictures with headlines about a criminal named Gerold. He told me there were three accounts under my name being used for illicit activities,” she said, adding: “The next thing I know, I was sending him money from me. real bank accounts as part of an official procedure to prove that I operated them.”

After receiving nearly half a million rupees (€5,500) from Biswas, the fake officer said he would call back. “They called me back. But to say “sorry, that was a scam”.

Stories like Biswas’s have become very common. Digital financial fraud saw a fivefold increase between March 2023 and 2024, with the money stolen amounting to around 14.57 billion rupiah (about 162 million euros, $175 million), according to data provided by the central bank of India.

Why scams have taken India by storm?

A team of international researchers recently published a World Cybercrime IndexIndia ranked 10th on the list, emerging as a hub that “sort of specializes in scams”.

While there is little or no data to clarify why scams have grown exponentially in India, researcher Ridhi Kashyap, who was part of the team that created the index, hypothesized.

Kashyap believes that digital literacy is lagging behind the wave of digitization that has swept India. “People are doing important things in their lives on their phones. But digital literacy hasn’t caught up.”

Government policies and the COVID pandemic have catapulted the Indian masses towards rapid digitization of payments and key public infrastructure.

The value of transfers made through the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), an instant payment system, in India rose from 1 trillion rupees (€10.9 billion, $11.2 billion) in the 2017-18 financial year to more than 200 trillion rupees (about $2.4 trillion) in the 2023-24 financial year, according to data released by the Press Information Bureau of India and the Reserve Bank of India.

Women are particularly vulnerable to scams, Kashyap said, adding that India has a large digital gender gap. “Women are much less likely to own a mobile phone. When they do own them, they are less likely to have sole ownership and often rely on family members to help them navigate. This means a lower level of trust and greater vulnerability,” she. said.

Another key factor in the Indian context is the large number of young people who are qualified in technical education but do not have meaningful employment, Kashyap told DW. “We see this in Russia and Ukraine as well,” she said.

YouTuber Jim Browning, who hacked into the computers and surveillance systems of professional fraud centers — mostly in India — said he often asks the perpetrators why they cheat people.

“Most say they don’t have a choice. I’ve seen some of their resumes on their computers. These are well-educated graduates in many cases,” Browning, who is not using his real name, told DW.

Another glaring reason, according to Browning, is the low rate of law enforcement. “I know there is a lot of corruption. There have been cases where we have reported a scam center and instead of a raid the opposite happens. The ring leaders have deleted the evidence, packed up and left,” he said.

Can Scam Growth Be Controlled?

A police station dealing with cybercrime in the capital New Delhi was flooded with scared but hopeful victims when DW visited it a few days ago.

“It’s like that every day,” said a junior officer. “We are inundated with cases and that’s even after we transfer those involving more than 10 million rupees to headquarters,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

In a booth, senior officer Arun Kumar Verma poured over documents that needed to be signed to release the recovered funds to some of the more fortunate victims.

“Cybercrime is not like a regular burglary, there is no perpetrator who was present at the scene of the crime. Just a phone number and an account number that could belong to anyone,” he said, explaining how many fraudsters use bank accounts proxy.

“On the other hand, there is a clear digital trail, so I can tell you that there are a lot of cases where we successfully recover money,” he pointed out.

However, the lack of resources – both personal and otherwise – is a serious problem. “We take cases based on the location of the victim’s residence. But criminals can sit with a phone and a laptop anywhere in India, which means days of travel. We don’t have time for that,” Verma said.

The officer also warned of a new wave of investment scams targeting Indians at home and abroad.

“Our real problem starts when the money trail leaves the country,” Verma said, explaining that this makes recovery much more difficult.

While most scams depend on the victims’ lack of knowledge and fear, this new wave relies on something else – the victims’ greed. “If you look at the victims of investment scams, they are mostly young, educated, get-rich-quick people,” he said.

“Their greed makes them easy targets.”

A more attentive Shatabdi Biswas still receives scam calls on a regular basis. “Sometimes I pick up the call and yell at them. Take out my frustration,” she said.

Now she makes sure her bank accounts only hold the minimum amount of cash she needs and invests the rest, out of reach of scammers. – It was a lesson.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru