The Premise
Your phone rings. It is the police. They take your name, identify your Aadhar card, and say that you are the prime suspect in a multi-million fraud. There is an FIR registered in your name in a faraway city. Since you cannot be present in person at the police station, they ask for a Skype session. You reluctantly agree. And then the interrogation begins.
You try your best to explain that you have nothing to do with that fraud, you have never been to that city, and yet you’re helpless. You’re not able to answer a single question. The two officers are grilling you for hours on end. The first round of interrogation ends with a threat that you must keep this information only to yourself if you don’t want to hurt anyone else close to you. “we are watching you. Cyber cell is monitoring everything”. They sternly say that the case has to be investigated in a detailed manner, so you must report your locations to the authorities every hour on a particular Skype chat channel. The phone ends with “If you don’t comply with any of the terms, we will arrest you from your home.”
Again, you are completely helpless. You don’t have any option but to comply. Your mind is constantly racing thinking about – who has committed this fraud using your identity. Who knows your identity numbers? And how on earth you’re going to get out of this mess?
Now you might think of this as a script for a suspense movie but unfortunately, this is no movie. It’s a new scam on the market with a growing list of victims. The way the interrogation is orchestrated, even the most sophisticated employees have fallen prey to this scam. And one of them was a close friend of mine. I want to narrate his experience with the change of his name to protect his identity.
The Case
Raj is a cheerful and generous man. He was like an open book. Anyone could ask him anything and be sure to get an honest response. He was one of the top performers on our team. He loved to hang out with everyone. He can easily start a conversation with anyone. He was so honest in his approach to human connections, that many people would end up speaking the deepest truths about their lives. When I asked, “How do people open their hearts to you?” He smiled and replied, “Everyone has a story and a story requires a listener.”
One topic that really would change this listener to a prolific speaker was the stock market. He has a passion for day trading. He has been learning about trading through various classes, YouTube, and his own set of trading friends. He has subscribed to many Facebook and WhatsApp channels for market tips. In those discussions, many times he has published his mobile number. He has many (and I mean many) share market-related WhatsApp groups. In those groups, he shared his analysis and sometimes gave details about his successful trades. He never shied away from talking to a stranger to help them improve their trading skills. With whatever knowledge he had in the stock market, he was always sharing with us as well. One time, his tip helped me earn 20k in a single day. Not only with his share market knowledge, but he was the first to help anyone with anything. Unbeknownst to all of us, he had gifted a poor housekeeping staff with a new laptop last year, so his son could study computer programming.
So naturally when he started hiding behind his laptop, avoiding us at all costs, I began to suspect that something was a miss. I tried to speak to him but to no avail. When I tried to speak to his wife to understand if something was troubling them, the poor wife broke completely. She cried a lot saying he was not speaking anything with her as well. She suspected he was under black magic. I couldn’t see him in this state. I wondered if he had lost a large amount of money in the market gamble and therefore was under financial stress. I decided to find out one afternoon. I forced him to come with me for a tea break. He was not answering any of my questions but I saw a tear welling up in his eyes. He simply asked me, “You had some tussle with the law in your life. If required, can you suggest me a good lawyer?”
This simple statement confused me even more. I kept on asking for more details of the situation which would warrant a lawyer’s intervention in his life. He was adamant not to share more details. He was repeating the phrase “The less you know is better. It is for your own good”. “I don’t want anyone to be in trouble due to me”.
I was not able to make out anything from his responses.
Was the situation about financial loss? Did someone cheat you? Is there trouble within the family? I picked up all these topics but his responses didn’t change. I was exhausting all my options to probe him further. Towards the end, I simply said, “I have always confided in you whenever I had any troubles in my life. Now I realize you don’t consider me as good friend as I think of you, to confide in me your troubles.”
Hiding his tears, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I wished you hadn’t said that”. For the next 2 hours, he narrated everything that had happened to him for the last 3 days. It shook me to the core. I couldn’t believe Raj was going through a huge mental pressure.
A phone call had changed his life. He received an unknown number call. In a typical IVR voice, the voice told him that they were calling from TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), and asked him to call back on a particular number or else your mobile services would be disconnected permanently.
Naturally worried Raj dialed back on the given number. The male voice on the other end claimed that you had reached the cyber cell Mumbai police number. After briefly taking down his name, Raj was transferred to an officer. The officer alleged that Raj Kulkarni having the Aadhar card as so and so, is one of the prime suspects in a multi-million $ fraud unearthed in Mumbai. There was a warrant pending against Raj Kulkarni at Andheri West police station. He had to be either present in person or agree to a Skype interrogation.
What evidence did they have against you? How can you be sure that was the cyber cell? I interrupted Raj.
“They showed me my Aadhar was used to pledge money to a bank. The folks who spoke to me over Skype showed me their police ID cards”
I wasn’t too convinced. I asked him what more did they ask?
He said that they noted down all of his bank accounts, and their balance details so they could verify if money was transferred from his bank or not. They asked about all the family members’ details so they could verify if they were involved in this fraud or not. They categorically asked me not to speak about this fraud to anyone as this has not yet been disclosed to the media. They mentioned, “if anyone gets to know about this fraud, we would know you leaked the information. The cyber cell needs time to investigate the matter in detail. If found guilty, we would have to arrest you and all who know about it would be considered as coconspirators. Considering the sensitivity of the case, no one is to be contacted about this matter, no family members should know nor should you approach anyone from the law.” To avoid issuing a flight risk arrest warrant, they asked him to put his location on a chat group every hour.
I still couldn’t believe it. I also found it fishy that the police gave a threat not to speak to anyone. Why would they deny him a lawyer’s counsel?
I asked him if he had any idea when would they conclude their investigation of his case.
1 week
I somehow suspected it to be a fraud. The isolation of the victim. I asked him to approach the local police station to find out if there was any truth to the matter but he was too scared to even think about this option.
I asked him to show me the number that he dialed in which led to Mumbai cyber cell. He showed me both the numbers – the first call from TRIA and the next number he called in. He earnestly tried to show me these as evidence as if to justify that what he said really did happen to him.
I used my smartphone to see if there was anything I could find on these numbers. Bingo.
I found these numbers on true callers listed as spam, but that was not enough to shake Raj out of his mindset until we scrolled down. There in the comments sections, people gave detailed accounts of what exactly had happened with them that matched word to word, what had happened with Raj. Raj was in disbelief after reading comments after comments, the same ordeal.
Shit, was I really fooled? Uttered Raj
I guess so.
A hint of a smile returned on Raj’s face. He immediately called up his wife to speak to her about what happened to him for the last 3 days and why he was quiet.
He understood from those comments, that after a week, these scammers would ask him for money to shut the case forever. People had lost 50k to 5lcs to them. Based on your bank balance, which you’d given them in the initial interrogations, they would demand money from you. By threatening to arrest you and your loved one, they would isolate the victim. By asking the victim to share the location each hour, scammers were psychologically controlling the victim. Eventually, a weak, alone, and tired mind would give to their demands of money to get out of this mess.
When he contacted authorities, they told him that generally, these scammers hunt the groups for someone who is active in the groups. They suspected that Raj’s number would have been picked up from either the FB-based share market group or from the trading WhatsApp groups. He has not only left all the groups but now started using another phone exclusively for share market information exchanges.
I was wondering, what if someone gets really scared from the constant mental torture, what if they commit suicide from this sort of pressure, how horrific it is! That got me thinking about what could be our preventive measures to avoid getting in this sort of situation.
So here is what I learned from this incident –
- Have two numbers, one for using it in the generic groups which is mostly made of strangers.
- Never give away your personal details to anyone without verifying. ( a simple Google search can be immensely helpful)
- Don’t share your Xerox Aadhar or PAN copies without a reason. – we often don’t value our Aadhar and PAN card numbers as much as we should. We don’t care to share the Xerox with anyone who asked, without verifying if it is required. They can easily take our numbers from these Xerox and scam us or even take a sim on our name without our knowledge. Also, it is better to have your personal identification information in Digi locker than say Gmail or drive, etc.
- There is nothing that your family or friends can’t help you with so don’t consider yourself alone in any problem.