The Ingenious Harm Caused by “Digital Arrests” in India

The modus operandi goes like this: You get a call from an unknown number; you pick up and are told that your name came up in a heinous crime like child trafficking or money laundering or drug smuggling. They rattle off your personal identification numbers and state that they have a warrant out for your arrest; police departments in the vicinity have been notified, and they’re on their way to take you into physical custody.

Unless… you agree to enter digital custody with those posing as law enforcement over the phone. By now you’re probably terrified and are thinking of the worst-case scenario, so you agree to be placed under “digital arrest.” The people on the phone ask you to convert the phone call into a video call so that they can place you under surveillance and monitor your every move. Then they coerce and manipulate you into transferring large sums of money under false pretense of having (fabricated) evidence of wrongdoing against you. This can go on for days with restricted access, movement, and communication with anyone other than the “law enforcement” on the video call.

Source: tommy pixel / Pixabay

However, there’s no such thing as digital arrest. It’s a completely made-up term and is one of the latest financial scams that has been draining Indians of their hard-earned money. The original harm caused by digital arrest scams is huge: Individuals have lost billions of rupees, and one estimate rakes up a loss of nearly $210 million. As I write this, I’m notified of yet another digital arrest scam where an 86-year-old woman in my hometown of Mumbai was duped of ₹20 crore (about $2.3 million).

Dark Creativity

This is the most recent and obvious use of dark creativity to cause real, measurable damage. What makes digital arrest scams so novel and effective for scammers? Deploying a unique term, bad actors cleverly use narratives to ensure that victims realize their alleged guilt in a crime. Scammers are pushing all the right buttons and tactfully using psychological manipulation to make victims emotionally vulnerable by invoking depraved and illicit acts (e.g., child pornography), all of which can disrupt rational decision-making.

Digital arrest scams also induce the moral emotions of guilt and shame in their victims, both of which are meant to make people feel self-conscious and act in morally appropriate ways. The basic emotion targeted is fear, heightening a sense of self-preservation—meaning you will do what you can to save yourself. Scammers also target vulnerable individuals like senior citizens and those who are not digitally literate to increase the likelihood of victims falling prey to their tactics.

From the victim’s point of view, seeing someone in a law enforcement uniform is enough to scare them into obedience. Imagine getting a video call from a “police officer” who shoves incriminating evidence into the phone camera, seated in a “police station.” It brings us back to Milgram’s shocking experiment, where participants complied with the instructions of an experimenter in a lab coat to administer (fake) lethal shocks to their learning partner seated in another room. In the case of destructive obedience, the victim was someone else; but in the case of digital arrests, the victim is metaphorically administering shocks to themselves. Further, India scores high on power distance—a cultural dimension that measures the unequal distribution of power and resources in a nation, coupled with high deference to authority figures. Effective scams leverage these social beliefs, making them more effective.

Source: Markus Winkler / Pexels

The originality of these scams has also not decayed as rapidly as one would assume. Consider the 9/11 attacks—using airplanes as weapons was the principal novelty in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. However, by the time an attempt was made to crash the United Airlines Flight 93, passengers who had heard of the morning’s other attacks overpowered the hijackers, and the plane missed its intended target. This was publicized the world over, and originality decayed rapidly. In the case of digital arrests, embarrassment and social stigma may prevent victims from seeking recourse; these scams also target individuals and not groups, making widespread awareness more difficult.

Tips if Faced With This Type of Fraud

Although concerted efforts by the Press Information Bureau of India, various banks in India, lawyers groups, and psychologists are underway, victims are still falling prey to this novel fraud. It is critical to conduct not just media literacy but also financial and legal literacy interventions, especially with vulnerable populations to mitigate the dire effects of this originality. So here are some important tips if you or a loved one faces such a situation:

1. You cannot be arrested digitally in India. If the police would like to arrest you, they will come to you with an arrest warrant. If you are female, you cannot be arrested between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless there are exceptional circumstances. Note, digital arrests do not classify as exceptional, because they are fictional.
2. If you happen to pick up a call from an unknown number (especially a non-+91 number), and you start talking to whoever is on the other end, know that they may have acquired some personal data about you from third parties, but they cannot coerce you into doing anything you do not want to.
3. The police are obliged to inform relatives or friends of the arrested person about the arrest as well as where the person is being held; if they refuse to share this information about your “arrest,” something is amiss.
4. If the worst has happened and you have transferred money to the people who have called you, document the crime and timeline and call the National Cyber Crime helpline in 1930 or visit cybercrime.gov.in. Follow @Cyberdost on X (formerly Twitter).