Noida doctor scammed of ₹59 lakh after fake ‘digital arrest’, porn allegation

Digital arrest is becoming an emerging trend across the national capital to scam people. Victims are accused of outrageous offences and made to transfer money.

A Noida-based doctor lost ₹59 lakh in what police describe as a new digital scam. Cyber criminals tricked the woman into believing that she was under ‘digital arrest’ for 48 hours for circulating pornography through her mobile phone.

Scammers accused the woman of circulating pornography through her phone (Representative image)

The victim, Dr Puja Goyal, received a call on July 13 from a person, who claimed to be an official from the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The person alleged that the doctor was using her mobile phone to circulate pornographic content.

Though Goyal denied the claim, the caller made her join a video call for an ‘investigation’. After a while, the group claimed the doctor was under digital arrest, reported NDTV.

After almost 48 hours of the alleged ‘investigation’, the resident from Sector 77 was made to transfer a whooping ₹59,54,000 into a specific account as ‘penalties’ for the alleged offence.

‘Digital arrest’ has become the preferred tactic of late among scammers to scare people by charging them with outrageous offences. Once the targets get scared and start to cooperate with the caller, they are duped with huge sums of money.

In these cases, the targets are believed to be houses or rooms where the scammers also pose as law enforcement personnel. Fake government IDs are also shown to convince the targets of their authenticity.

In a similar incident, a 72-year-old man from Delhi's posh Chittaranjan Park was charged with a similar offence and duped into transferring ₹83 lakh into a specific ban account.

Noida police recently issued an advisory warning people about this emerging trend. "In recent months, around ten such incidents have been reported, leading to registered FIRs and ongoing investigations," the advisory read.