Cyber Police Recover Rs 1.1 Crore Siphoned From Andheri West Businessman

A 73-year-old businessman from Andheri (West) lost Rs 7.9 crore after being placed under a two-week digital arrest by cyber fraudsters, before the West cyber police station managed to trace and save Rs 1.1 crore of the stolen funds. The victim registered an FIR on July 21 against unknown persons after realizing he was duped when the scammers asked him to take out a loan to transfer more money.

According to cyber police, the scammers kept the senior citizen under continuous digital arrest from July 5 to July 18 under the pretext of verifying the source of his money. The fraudsters threatened him by claiming that his Aadhaar and PAN cards had been used to open a bank account linked to a money laundering case involving Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal registered in Delhi.

During the two-week ordeal, the victim was coerced into transferring Rs 7.9 crore to half a dozen bank accounts, including one located in Delhi. The fraud came to light when Delhi Police detected suspicious transfers credited to a local mule bank account and sent an alert to Mumbai Police.

Following the alert, cyber police officers and uniformed local police officers visited the businessman's home in Andheri over two days to warn him about the ongoing fraud. However, the victim did not believe the officers at the time and refused to stop the transfers. He only approached the police two days later after his bank account balance hit zero and the scammers instructed him to apply for a loan to send additional funds.

Investigators subsequently uncovered a massive multi-state operation used to siphon the victim's savings. DCP (cyber) Bajrang Bansode stated that the probe identified at least 200 mule bank accounts opened across at least five different states to transfer and distribute the defrauded money. Bansode noted that police could have saved a much larger sum had the senior citizen trusted the uniformed officers who visited his home during the scam.