Digital arrest scam: Govt blocked 1,700 Skype IDs and 59,000 Whatsapp accounts used for the fraud, says Minister Bandi Sanjay

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The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has identified and blocked more than 1,700 Skype IDs and 59,000 WhatsApp accounts used for digital fraud, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday (December 3, 2024).

Also read: What is ‘digital arrest scam’ and how can you protect yourself?

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar also stated that the ‘Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System,’ launched under I4C in 2021, enables immediate reporting of financial frauds to prevent the siphoning off of funds by fraudsters and so far, over ₹3,431 crore has been saved in more than 9.94 lakh complaints.

“The I4C has pro-actively identified and blocked more than 1,700 Skype IDs and 59,000 WhatsApp accounts used for digital fraud,” Mr. Kumar said in response to a written question.

As of November 15, 2024, more than 6.69 lakh SIM cards and 1.32 lakh IMEIs, as reported by police authorities, have been blocked by the government.

The Minister further explained that to strengthen the mechanism for addressing cyber crimes, including digital fraud, the Central Government and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) have developed a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls that display Indian mobile numbers, making them appear as though they originate within India.

Mr. Kumar noted that such spoofed calls have been used by cyber criminals in recent cases of fake digital arrests, FedEx scams, and impersonation as government or police officials.

Directions have been issued to TSPs to block such incoming international spoofed calls. Additionally, a State-of-the-Art Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been established at I4C, where representatives from major banks, financial institutions, payment aggregators, TSPs, IT intermediaries, and law enforcement agencies from States and UTs collaborate to ensure immediate action and seamless cooperation in tackling cybercrime.

The Minister said a suspect registry of identifiers of cyber criminals has been launched by I4C on September 10, 2024 in collaboration with banks and financial institutions and has introduced a new feature ‘Report and Check Suspect’ on the portal cybercrime.gov.in.

This facility provides citizens a search option to search I4C’s repository of identifiers of cyber criminals through ‘suspect search’.