Fraud Briefing

The CBI arrested five more accused - Sanket Bastwar, Pankaj Damade (Itarsi, MP), Arif alias King Bhai, Harish Purushottam Yadav alias Harry (Delhi), and Shashank Singh alias Ravi (Ghaziabad, UP) - in connection with three digital arrest fraud cases, bringing total arrests in Operation Chakra-VI to eight. The accused were involved in receiving, layering, and dispersing fraud proceeds through mule accounts, and three of them also deployed a malicious APK on the account holder's phone to intercept SMS alerts and covertly operate the account.

Fraudsters impersonating police and CBI officers keep victims under prolonged digital arrest, video call confinement for weeks or months, coercing large fund transfers. In the latest arrests, the network also installed a malicious APK on a mule account holder's phone to intercept incoming bank OTP and SMS alerts, enabling silent, covert control of the account without the holder's knowledge. Funds are then rapidly layered across multiple accounts the same day to obscure trails.

Financial loss of Rs 42.36 crore across three victims: BITS Pilani (Rs 7.67 crore, 3-month digital arrest), Gujarat (Rs 19.24 crore, 3-month digital arrest), and Karnataka (Rs 15.45 crore, 1-month digital arrest).