New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: An international digital fraud syndicate allegedly involved in cheating its victims of over Rs 50 crore by impersonating law enforcement officials has been busted, with the arrest of 10 people, including from Odisha, police said Tuesday. The arrests were made from Delhi, Maharashtra, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana as part of a probe that began in southeast Delhi, they said.
The syndicate operated a digital arrest scam, threatening its victims through video calls while impersonating police officers. The callers would lie to their targets that their Aadhaar and mobile numbers were linked to serious criminal cases and would coerce them into transferring money to avoid arrest. The fraud came to light with a complaint filed December 7 by a Shaheen Bagh resident, who alleged that he had been cheated of Rs 99,888 after receiving threatening video calls from fraudsters posing as Karnataka Police officers.
An FIR was registered under Section 318(4) of the BNS, and a probe was launched into the alleged fraud. Investigations revealed that the arrested accused were part of an interstate and cross-border network involving mule bank accounts, illegal SIM activation and social media authentication using multiple devices, police said.
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