Bengaluru: It all started on September 15, 2024. The woman got a call from someone who said he was a CBI officer. He told her a parcel, supposedly sent from Andheri in Mumbai in her name, had been seized. Inside, he claimed, were four passports, three credit cards, MDMA, and other illegal stuff. She tried to explain she’d never even been to Mumbai, but the callers wouldn’t back down. They insisted her identity had been stolen and now she was under investigation for cybercrime.
Right away, fear took over. Before she could hang up, they passed her to someone else, this time pretending to be a senior CBI official. He cranked up the pressure, saying things were serious and they had "evidence." They threatened her—don’t tell anyone, not even the police. Criminals are watching your home, they said. With her family’s safety on the line, and her son’s engagement coming up, she did what they said.
The instructions got stranger. The scammers told her to make two Skype IDs and stay online all the time. For months, she lived on video calls. First, a man named Mohit Handa watched her for two days. Then Rahul Yadav took over for a week. After that, a third guy, Pradeep Singh, claimed he was a senior CBI official and kept demanding she “prove her innocence.” The pressure was nonstop.
Then the money started flowing out. Between September 24 and October 22, she gave up her financial details and began transferring huge sums. From late October to early November, she deposited Rs 2 crore as a so-called “surety amount.” Then came payments marked as “taxes.” She broke her fixed deposits, drained her savings, and made 187 transfers—Rs 31.83 crore altogether. The fraudsters promised it would all come back after “verification.”
They even sent her a fake clearance letter right before her son’s engagement, just to keep her hooked. The stress wore her down. She ended up needing medical help, both mentally and physically.
Things dragged on. After December, the scammers started asking for more “processing charges,” always moving the refund date. Finally, in March, they vanished. No more responses. After her son’s wedding in June, she finally went to the police.
Now, investigators are digging into what looks like a pretty sophisticated cybercrime racket.
