Mumbai: “My mind simply stayed blank.” This is how a deputy director of a financial institution described the moment when a man, posing as a police officer for a video call, aggressively accused her of drug trafficking and placed it in ‘Digital Custody’ last year. He ended up paying almost RS 1 Lakh when the person who called his hostage in his room for 90 minutes. A Senior Ti professional reported his ‘digital unemployment’ in which he “almost lost” RS 25 Lakh. “It felt as if I had been hypnotized. I couldn’t think and I was about to transfer RS 25 Lakh to the scammer account when I lost my wifi connection. That’s when I left the stupor and realized what I had been about to do,” he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said,
Feeling “paralyzed with fear”, “Blanking” and “inability to think clearly” are recurrent descriptions used by the victims of ‘digital arrest’.
Digital unemployment fraud does not imply only a simple deception. Scammers use psychological manipulation, systematically isolating their objectives, manufacturing elaborate realities and taking advantage of sophisticated techniques to create an unavoidable sensation of panic.
This could be a possible explanation why the scammers continue to catch the victims. Last year, Mumbai Pol Ice registered 195 cases of digital unemployment fraud. The figure has already reached 15 in the first two months of this year.
Cyber police says that while older citizens form most digital arrest victims, well -qualified professionals such as bankers, doctors and directors of multinational companies are also vulnerable.
Remembering how she was cheated, a direction assistant said she was about to go to work when a call came around 8.45 am the person she called had her Aadhaar number and said that a package she had sent was found that she contained drugs. “They asked me to lock me in my room and I did not approach my family. The person who called threatened if a FIR was recorded, would endanger my chances of flying abroad. My only thought at that time was to leave the situation fulfilling their demands,” he said.
“People attacked in these scams often have a certain degree of financial stability, reputation and respect in society. When these aspects are threatened, particularly a threat to life, people become extremely vulnerable,” said the consultant, the psychiatrist, Dr. Avinash de Sousa. A major citizen of a western suburb said that he blindly followed the instructions of a scammer and paid RS 9 Lakh after being threatened with possible damage to his daughter. Dr. De Sousa said that before the threats perceived for loved ones, victims tend to look for the most immediate solution.
“No one wants your family to be damaged. If paying money seems to be the easiest way to solve the situation, that is what one will do.”
The cyber psychologist Nirali Bhatia attributed this vulnerability to our innate tendency to comply with the instructions of the perceived authority figures. “A person who uses a chaqui color uniform, which shows a police logo in the background or who uses a judge robe during a video call provides significant visual validation,” he said. When claiming access to private information, such as Aadhaar or PAN numbers or the details of the bank account, scammers create the illusion of legitimate legal actions. “Once the fear of the trial, logical thinking becomes impossible. The manufactured sense of urgency does not allow the individual to take a pause for rational consideration,” Bhatia added.
A man in his 40s, who lost RS 32 Lakh to the scammers, said he had received a call from a false “CBI officer” who accused him of false advertising. The next day, he received official -looking documents in a letterhead of the Supreme Court with seal and seal.
“There was no place to doubt,” he said.
The former IPS officer turned into a lawyer YP Singh said that perpetrators use information obtained from the Internet to build convincing scenarios, exploiting the lack of legal knowledge of their objectives.
The cyber lawyer, Dr. Prashant Mali, said that scammers improve their credibility through the use of real data and videos generated by AI.
“Even people with advanced technical knowledge, including IIT graduates and cybersecurity professionals, succumb to these scam It often falls prey to these scams due to insufficient consciousness, confidence out of place in online interactions and exploitation through social engineering tactics. “