A woman in the Indian city of Delhi was last week confronted with “digital arrest” – a form of fraud in which victims make payments to criminals while posing as police officers.

Delhi Police explained that the woman received calls from people posing as agents of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Indian equivalent of the FBI.

The callers claimed that the woman’s husband had been charged with crimes and that if she paid to secure his release, the charges would be dropped and the story would not reach the media.

The scammer forced the victim to stay on the phone for six hours, claiming the long call was a “digital arrest”. The woman paid ₹200,000 ($2,384) and was about to make another payment when her husband walked through the door – at which point she realised she had been scammed.

On Saturday, police arrested three men in connection with the incident.

According to local media, the suspects had similarly extorted money from others, posing as CBI agents and threatening to arrest relatives of victims.

One of the suspects had previously worked for Airtel Payments Bank and was well versed in the banking system. Another was a SIM card seller and had access to the kit using fake IDs. Yet another was responsible for providing mule bank accounts using fake IDs.

Police seized 15 mobile phones, 15 debit cards from various banks and 14 SIM cards from the alleged fraudsters.

Although the technology of virtually detaining victims is new, digital arrest fraud resembles many other scams in that it exploits fear to extort money from victims.

“Using a mix of social media and phone call data, scammers trick people into following their orders, sometimes for days, and empty their bank accounts,” said Mudit Bansal, a threat intelligence researcher at Indian infosec firm CloudSEK. The register“They keep users in their seat while they pull information from their social media and build on their fear.”

He added that the fraudsters even use information from public data breaches to trick victims into thinking they know things that only a law enforcement official could know.

They also use information a panicked victim reveals during the conversation to further fool their target – although according to Bansal, “most of this is just general guesses.” The victim may also hear fake crying sounds in the background at this point that they think is their loved one.

Bansal warned that some of the most sophisticated scammers are setting up fake payment websites that mimic the online presence of law enforcement agencies in order to convince victims to hand over their money.

According to the researcher, common reasons for a digital arrest include authorities intercepting contraband in a package, a partner or child being involved in drug trafficking, or sexual violence.

Most examples of digital arrest scams appear to come from India. In fact, all of the cases cited in an explainer by the Geneva-based nonprofit CyberPeace Institute come from the subcontinent — as do most reports of the crime found online.

Bansal, however, stresses that the scam is a global phenomenon.

“However, reports from other parts of the world are much smaller than what the Indian subcontinent sees,” the CloudSEK researcher said The register.

“Rapid digitalization and gullibility make the public of the Indian subcontinent highly susceptible to cyber fraud. If we add to that the power of AI in video and audio manipulation, we can also predict a sharp rise in such frauds,” he concluded. ®