A 42-year-old woman has fallen prey to a digit arrest scam recently. The victim was contacted by a gang of scammers impersonating Customs and police officials and extracting money from the victim by falsely claiming that his links had been found with criminal elements and that she would be arrested, said the officials.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Jalgaon. On June 11, the victim had received a phone call from a person claiming to be a Customs officer from Delhi. The said person told the victim that someone had misused her Aadhar card to book a parcel containing 16 fake passports, 58 ATM cards and 140 grams of MDMA drugs.
The victim then received a call from a person claiming to be a Delhi police officer who shared bogus documents such as arrest seizure order and arrest warrant with the victim. A bogus web link was also shared with the victim which had bogus case details related to the victim.
On the pretext of verifying the financial transactions of the victim, the scammers induced the victim to transfer Rs 8.50 lakh in other beneficiary bank accounts. However, when the demand for money kept continuing, the victim realised that he had been duped. She then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter last week.
The victim in her complaint to the police has provided the mobile numbers used by the scammers and beneficiary bank accounts used by the scammers.
The police have registered a case under sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (forgery), 471 (using genuine a forged) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
