17, including 4 Taiwanese, held for 'digital arrest' in Gujarat

On a day when Malayalam actor Maala Parvathy revealed a gang of scamsters held her hostage for hours together, the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch arrested 17 people, including four from Taiwan, for allegedly operating a nationwide "digital arrest" racket. Curiously, scamsters told Parvathy that 'MDMA was found in a parcel sent in her name to Taiwan and that her Aadhaar details were misused to send the parcel'.

The digital arrest is a type of cybercrime in which the victim is made to believe that he/she is under investigation by authorities for money laundering. The victim is asked to remain in confinement while being accessible to fraudsters via video or audio call, hence the term digital arrest. The victim is then forced by the accused to transfer large amounts of money into various bank accounts in order to be 'let off'.

The gang had "digitally arrested" a senior citizen for 10 days, kept watch on him via video calls and got him to deposit Rs 79.34 lakh as "refundable" processing fees to sort out an "RBI issue", said Joint Commissioner (Crime) Sharad Singhal, PTI reported.

According to the police, the senior citizen registered a complaint that some persons calling themselves officials of TRAI, CBI, and the cybercrime branch had alleged that his account was being used for illegal transactions.

"After receiving a complaint last month, our teams raided places in Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Odisha, and Maharashtra and nabbed 17 persons, including four Taiwan natives, for running this nationwide racket. We believe they may have targeted some 1,000 persons so far," Singhal told reporters.

The four Taiwanese nationals arrested are Mu Chi Sung (42), Chang Hu Yun (33), Wang Chun Wei (26) and Shen Wei (35), while the remaining 13 are from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha and Rajasthan, he added.

The four Taiwanese accused have been visiting India for the past year and have provided mobile phone apps and other technical support to members of the gang to transfer money from one account to another.

"The gang's mobile app was developed by the Taiwanese accused. They have also integrated online wallets into their system. Money received from victims was transferred to other bank accounts as well as crypto accounts in Dubai using this app. They used to get a commission through hawala on the money they used to route through that app," explained Singhal.

Singhal said the racket was being run from call centres that were designed to resemble real offices of probe agencies and from which video calls were made. Police have recovered Rs 12.75 lakh in cash, 761 SIM cards, 120 mobile phones, 96 cheque books, 92 debit and credit cards and 42 bank passbooks related to accounts taken on rent to make transactions, Singhal said.