Cyber Fraud

SC to hear next week suo motu case concerning victims of digital arrest

The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear next week a suo motu case concerning victims of digital arrest. Digital arrest is a growing form of cybercrime in which fraudsters pose as law enforcement officers, court officials or personnel from government agencies to intimidate victims through audio and video calls. They hold the victims hostage and put pressure on them to pay money. On February 9, the top court described the siphoning of more than Rs 54,000 crore by digital frauds as absolute "robbery or dacoity" and asked the Centre to draft a standard operating procedure (SoP) in consultation with stakeholders like the RBI, banks and the Department of Telecommunications to deal with such cases. On Monday, Attorney General R Venkataramani mentioned the matter before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. The top law officer said he would place a status report in the matter during the day. Contending that things are moving, he urged the bench to take up

Orissa HC asks MHA to frame uniform policy on freezing bank accounts

Orissa High Court asks the Ministry of Home Affairs to frame a uniform national policy and SOP for freezing bank accounts during criminal investigations

Cyber fraudsters using new tech to bypass UPI security features: Report

Online fraudsters are using new technology that bypasses security features of UPI apps to carry out financial transactions, cyber intelligence firm CloudSEK claimed in a report. According to the report, the firm has identified at least 20 active groups on messaging platform Telegram, each with over 100 members, where a toolkit by the name of "Digital Lutera" is being discussed, distributed, and operationalised. "This is not just another UPI malware variant. Digital Lutera represents a structural attack on device trust. When the operating system itself is manipulated, traditional safeguards like SIM-binding and app signature checks become unreliable. If left unaddressed, this could industrialize account takeovers at scale across the digital payments ecosystem," CloudSEK, Threat Researcher, Shobhit Mishra said. CloudSEK claims to have done an analysis of one such group alone which indicates that transactions worth Rs 25 -30 lakh were processed over just two days, highlighting how ...

Cyber fraudsters dupe 76,794 people of ₹712 crore in Odisha in 18 months

Cyber fraudsters duped nearly 77,000 people in Odisha of about Rs 712 crore in the last 18 months, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi told the state Assembly

Best of BS Opinion: Broader ecosystem response needed to check cyber fraud

Today's Opinion highlights RBI's draft digital fraud framework, Nepal's political churn under Balen Shah, questions around India's growth optimism, LBS reforms, and a book on plastic's global spread.

RBI issues draft guidelines on compensating customers for digital fraud

The guidelines come amid a rise in fraud cases as digital payments see wider adoption in the country

RBI workshop urges stronger governance and tech use to fight cyber frauds

At a two-day workshop with 60 banks, RBI called for stronger governance, better internal controls and greater tech adoption to counter rising cyber-enabled financial frauds

Probe agencies can't be high-handed in freezing bank A/Cs: Allahabad HC

The Allahabad High Court has observed that there can be no room for discrimination or high-handedness when investigating agencies instruct banks to freeze accounts during cyber fraud probes. A division bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Siddharth Nandan is examining the procedures adopted by authorities in such cases. The court noted that banks often freeze accounts without providing much information to the holders. The observation came during the hearing of a writ petition filed by a man named Tarkeswar Tiwari. "Various writ petitions before us disclose that banks have frozen the accounts and when the customers approach them, they are only informed that the accounts have been frozen on the letter either by the police authorities or the cyber crime. However, the said letters till date have not been brought on record in spite of the specific instructions on the previous dates," the court said. The court has directed the Union government to address these concerns, noting th

Datanomics: OTP scams topped cyber fraud as Telangana became a hotspot

The new norms are slated to kick in from April 1

Pan-India cyber investment scam busted, 12 held from 6 states: UP police

A pan-India cyber investment fraud allegedly involving overseas links was busted with the arrest of 12 people from six states, police said on Saturday. The accused were arrested over the past 24 hours from Odisha, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for allegedly running a nationwide cyber investment racket through WhatsApp groups, SP (Rural) Amrit Jain said. Working in coordination with the Ministry of Telecommunications, the Aligarh cyber crime cell identified around 600 WhatsApp groups that were allegedly being used to lure and cheat investors across the country, Jain said. Police claimed that timely action helped prevent an estimated fraud of about Rs 500 crore that could have affected more than 1.5 lakh people nationwide. The case came to light after Dinesh Sharma, a retired deputy general manager of Punjab National Bank, approached the cyber crime cell on January 31 and reported that he had been cheated of over Rs 11 lakh through a WhatsApp-based .

Sanchar Saathi: DoT disconnects 3.9 mn mobile connections over cyber fraud

DoT's Sanchar Saathi initiative has enabled members of the public to report suspected fraudulent communications through its Chakshu facility, available via a web portal and mobile application

15 women among 22 arrested in Patna for operating cyber fraud call centres

Twenty-two people, including 15 women, were arrested from Bihar's Patna district for their alleged involvement in a cyber fraud, police said on Wednesday. The arrests were made during raids at three locations - Lakhan Kutir, Ved Nagar and Saubhagya Sharma Path - in Patna's Saguna Mor and Rupaspur areas. "We received information from the Economic Offences Unit (EOU) that illegal call centres were being operated in the Saguna Mor and Rupaspur areas to defraud people via cybercrimes. During raids, we arrested 15 women and seven men from three specific locations," Cyber Police Station (Patna) DSP Sangeeta told reporters. Nineteen laptops, one desktop computer, 53 mobile phones, 12 ATM cards, and several documents were recovered during the raids, she said. "Their primary targets were owners of cyber cafes. They download data and have a team to call the targeted people. They defraud them by promising B2B services and setting up Aadhaar centres," the DSP said. Sangeeta said that the ...

Cyber insurance explained: Shield against online fraud and ID theft

It gives access to legal, forensic and recovery support, not just money reimbursement, say experts

CBI arrests key cybercrime operatives after searches across 10 states

The CBI has arrested an alleged cybercriminal after conducting a massive countrywide search operation across 35 locations as part of a sweeping multinational crackdown on cyber-enabled financial crimes, officials said on Monday. Christened Operation CyStrike, the crackdown was launched on January 30 in coordination with law-enforcement agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Ireland, and Singapore. The CBI officers searched 35 locations across 10 states, including Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Telangana and West Bengal. The raids disrupted multiple cybercrime networks based in India that targeted victims in the United States, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Ireland, Singapore, and India, officials said. "During search operations, CBI busted and dismantled a transnational cyber-enabled financial crime network being operated by the accused persons from New Delhi, targeting US victims online. Electronic devices, viz

How Chinese-language networks laundered $16 billion via crypto in 2025

Known as CMLNs, these networks laundered $16.1 billion via cryptocurrency in 2025 and accounted for nearly 20 per cent of the global illicit crypto market last year

Fake traffic challan scam alert: How cybercriminals are stealing money

Fake traffic challan messages sent via SMS and WhatsApp are tricking people into paying on fraudulent websites, leading to massive financial losses

New MHA SOP eases refunds for cyber fraud cases below ₹50,000: Report

Under the SOP, refunds in small-value fraud cases, where the disputed amount is below ₹50,000, can be processed quickly without requiring a court order

Delhi Police bust Taiwan-linked cybercrime gang, recover ₹100 crore

The Delhi Police has busted a Taiwan-linked international cybercrime syndicate that allegedly defrauded around Rs 100 crore from people across India by impersonating anti-terror and law enforcement officers and placing them under "digital arrest", an official said on Saturday. Seven people, including a Taiwanese national allegedly coordinating the operation, have been arrested so far in the case, registered under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), IT Act and Telecommunications Act, police said. Investigators said several of the accused had previously worked in Cambodia-based scam centres and were allegedly recruited and funded by a Pakistan-based handler, while a Nepal-based layer is suspected to have remotely controlled operations. According to investigators, the cybercrime network targeted victims by making phone calls posing as officers of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and other security agencies, falsely accusing them of links with terror incidents such as the ...

US Congress email breach linked to China's 'Salt Typhoon' spy campaign

Emails of staff working for US House committees were reportedly hacked by China under the 'Salt Typhoon' cyber espionage campaign; the breach was detected in December last year

Cognizant hit with many US class-action lawsuits after TriZetto data breach

The complaints state that TriZetto, which provides healthcare claims, failed to protect personal data and did not inform affected people in a timely manner after a cyberattack