DIGITAL ARREST CRISIS

Rising cyber frauds in India, driven by digital-arrest rackets, hacked financial accounts and porous banking safeguards, now threaten public trust, financial stability and citizen safety

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This month, a 72-year-old businessman in Mumbai lost ₹58 crore in a 'digital arrest' scam that scattered the money across 6,500 bank accounts.

This crime, which involved a sum far higher than most physical bank heists that have now become rare, created shockwaves.

Not a single day goes by without newspapers splashing news of a digital arrest incident. Mumbai police alone logged 142 such cases between January and October '25, with more than ₹114 crore stolen from victims, mostly elderly residents.

Nationwide, losses are significantly higher, compounded by thousands of unreported or under-reported incidents. Bank frauds shot up to ₹36,014 crore in 2024-25, nearly tripling in value over the previous year. A simultaneous rise in other forms of cyber-enabled fraud, such as investment frauds, job scams and identity-based extortion, has effectively created a parallel economy of digital crime that is expanding faster than India's security, judicial and banking safeguards can respond.

Recently, cybercriminals created a flutter at two brokerages by hacking a client's Gmail account and accessing trading accounts. The hackers liquidated the client's entire portfolio and used the proceeds to buy illiquid penny stocks stuck in lower circuits. The stakeholders got into action with client filing a police complaint and informing the exchanges, and the brokerages monitoring any attempt to sell these stocks and to withhold payouts until the matter is resolved and culprits are traced.

Digital arrest scams sit at the centre of India's cyberfraud crisis, with its collective toll of ₹2,580 crore since 2022 ठर The actual scale is believed to be far larger, with global studies by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) indicating that only a fraction of scam victims report their losses or attempt recovery.

THE MODUS OPERANDI