Mumbai: A 57-year-old retired senior Income Tax officer from Mumbai fell victim to a sophisticated cyber extortion network. The victim, a resident of Nagpur, filed a formal complaint detailing a multi-day ordeal orchestrated by fraudsters impersonating senior law enforcement and regulatory authorities.
According to the police, the elaborate deception began on October 1, when the victim received an unexpected call from an unknown individual. The caller falsely identified himself as an operative named "Keshav Jadhav" broadcasting directly from the Mumbai Police Headquarters.
The victim was aggressively informed that a WhatsApp account registered under his name had been flagged for disseminating illegal advertisements. The scam rapidly escalated into severe psychological intimidation. The fraudster transferred the call to a co-conspirator posing as a police investigator.
The perpetrators claimed that victim's identification credentials had been actively recovered from a crime scene linked to a terrorist strike targeting security personnel in Kashmir.
Fabricating an immediate urgency, the fraudsters threatened the victim with immediate physical incarceration. They placed the retired official under a "digital arrest." The victim was strictly ordered to remain isolated in a hotel room with his phone's video camera constantly active to ensure surveillance.
Over the next five days, between October 2 and October 6, an individual falsely posing as a high-ranking Indian Police Service (IPS) investigator subjected the victim to daily video interrogations. The scammers claimed they were conducting an exhaustive financial sweep under the direct authorization of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), alleging his accounts were deeply linked to a multi-crore money laundering scheme.
Under extreme duress, the victim was coerced into liquidating a personal fixed deposit worth Rs 10 lakhs to satisfy a fraudulent "RBI security clearance verification." On October 8, the victim executed a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) transfer from his bank account to a corporate account.
Realizing he had been systematically defrauded after the perpetrators severed communication, the victim approached the Cyber Police to document the transaction trail. Law enforcement officials have initiated an active investigation into the designated mule accounts to track the movement of the stolen funds.
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