HOW BANK SCAMS ARE BEING DIGITALLY ARRESTED

With Indians being looted by scammers every day, the banking ecosystem is finally acting to protect them

- Shelley Singh

Earlier this month, a 72-year-old businessman from Mumbai was defrauded of ₹58 crore in a ‘digital arrest’ con that siphoned the money off into 6,500 bank accounts.

Meanwhile, a state legislator in Andhra Pradesh lost over ₹1 crore to callers posing as cyber-crime officials. Some men have fallen for the promise of attractive returns in share trading. For instance, a 60-year-old man in Thane lost ₹64 lakh and another in Hyderabad lost ₹12.5 lakh to an online share trading scam over WhatsApp calls.

Such incidents have become almost routine today, leading the Supreme Court to ask the Centre and the CBI how they plan to curb such scams.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows that bank frauds surged to ₹36,014 crore in 2024-25, a 194% increase in value compared to the previous year. Fraud today is faster, more social, and more networked than anything India has seen before. Now, the regulator, banks, payment platforms, technology companies, card companies, cloud services providers and even telecom companies (telcos) are coming together to create a defence system to prevent scams and catch scamsters.