New Cybercrime Targets Parents with Fake Police Calls
Scammers posing as police officers call victims' families from Pakistani numbers, alleging arrest or involvement in rape cases to extort money
Hyderabad: Many people have complained of the emergence of a new form of cybercrime where the parents or relatives of the victim receive WhatsApp calls from Pakistani numbers, with an Indian police officer’s display picture. The fake police officer alleges that their son has been arrested or is involved in a rape case.
If the target responds, instead of simply disconnecting the phone, they state that the matter could be resolved if they gave money.
A video of such a scam was posted on X by Director-General of Police Dr Jitender and ADGP Mahesh Bhagwat.
In the video, a man is seen attending a call which has the display picture of a police officer telling the victim’s family that their son, along with three of his friends, had raped a woman, who is now on her deathbed. They added that the matter could be settled if they were paid ₹ 40,000.
However, this is not an isolated incident.
Another victim posted on a social media platform, “Today my father got a call from a supposed police that I had raped someone and had been arrest. My parents called me, worried with the phone call. I told them it was a scam call.”
He said there was a similar incident in his brother’s college. “I suspect my data was leaked by the university or when the Aadhaar data leak happened some months ago. Now I want to report it to the police,” he said.
Another netizen, who alleged his voice was morphed using AI, posted, “My nanaji got the exact same call. Exact same scenario. They even used my voice to convince my nanaji about this. I still can't figure out how they got this information. Tcallers were using Pakistani number (sic).”
A fake voice scam was also widely prevalent some time back, where the scamster would use AI-generated voice of a real person and would call their family from an unknown number, asking for money as their phone was running low on battery.
Reporting a similar incident, another netizen posted: “My request to everyone is to never ever share anything personal (Aadhaar, PAN or any document) on the internet and be very careful of what links we click on from a WhatsApp text and educate parents as they are easy targets due to their lack of tech knowledge. Privacy of a common man is literally a joke in this country.”