Supreme Court ‘warrant’, 9 transactions: How a govt officer in Pune was duped of Rs 2 crore, trapped in ‘digital arrest’

Using a fake “Supreme Court warrant” in a fabricated money-laundering case, fraudsters duped a 57-year-old Maharashtra Government officer in Pune of Rs 2 crore in a “digital arrest scam”. The accused extracted money from the victim over five months on the pretext of “clearing his name” of the bogus charges.

According to the Pune police, a First Information Report (FIR) in the case was registered earlier this week by the 57-year-old officer working with a Maharashtra Government department. The victim said he was coerced into making nine large transactions to mule accounts totalling Rs 2.03 crore over five months last year.

According to the FIR, the victim received a WhatsApp call from a man who identified as ‘Sub Inspector Sharma from CBI’. The fraudster said the Central Bureau of Investigation was investigating a Rs 70 crore money laundering case, and that the victim’s name had been flagged in the investigation.

“The fraudster claimed that a bank account opened with the victim’s Aadhaar details had received Rs 60 lakh from the money laundering scam. When the victim denied any link to the money laundering case, the fraudster told him that a ‘Supreme Court warrant’ had been issued against him, and even sent a fake document on a forged Supreme Court letterhead with his name on it,” said an officer.

The fraudster then told the victim that his case was being forwarded to a senior CBI officer, ‘Commissioner Akash Fulari.’ This ‘senior officer’, who spoke from a WhatsApp number with the CBI logo as his display picture, told the complainant that he would have to cooperate with the probe or face prison time.

“The fraudster collected the victim’s financial details, including his bank balance, savings and investments. He then asked the victim to transfer those funds to “government accounts” for verification, and said that the money would be returned after the probe was over. Over the coming five months, the fraudsters kept coercing the victim to send them money,” the officer added.

After exhausting all his savings and investments, the complainant waited for several weeks for the money to be returned to him. When he could not reach any of the numbers he had been called from, he spoke to his friend about the case. When the officer’s friend told him he had been cheated, the officer approached the police, and an FIR was registered at the Cybercrime police station.

The police have said that despite extensive awareness campaigns and sensitisation efforts by the government and law enforcement agencies, incidents of digital arrest, online extortion, and blackmail continue to be reported.

These scams are typically carried out by cybercriminals impersonating officials from law enforcement agencies such as the police, CBI, Narcotics Department, RBI, and Enforcement Directorate, as well as judges.

Such frauds have been severe enough to be flagged at the highest levels, including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ address.

As previously reported by Express, these scams are orchestrated by complex, multilayered syndicates operating across borders. Victims’ funds are often funnelled into mule accounts and then routed to international cybercrime networks via cryptocurrency channels.