Indian influencer falls prey to 'digital arrest' scam

Instagram influencer Ankush Bahuguna broke silence on why he was missing from social media for the past few days. It was because he was being held hostage by scammers virtually. You read that right. Bahuguna was tricked into isolating himself from the world for forty hours because of a "rampant" scam that put him on house arrest.

"I'm still in a little bit of a shock. I've lost money, I've lost my mental health to this, and I can't believe that this happened to me," he shared in a reel on his handle, admitting that he is prone to such deceptions.

"Day before yesterday, I received a call after going to the gym from a very weird number - some international number. I just picked it up without thinking about it a lot, and it was an automated call that said, 'Your courier delivery has been cancelled. Press 0 for support.' I pressed 0 because I got curious," he recalled.

Bahuguna dubbed this response as the "biggest mistake" of his life. A fraudulent customer support told him that illegal items had been identified in a package he didn't remember sending. Despite the confusion, he did refute the claims. However, the longer he spoke to the scammers, the more legitimate their words began to sound.

"They told me, 'Sir, your name, your home address, everything is in this. This is a very serious crime and now you will be arrested. There's an arrest warrant already in your name'," he mentioned, adding that they convinced him to connect to a fake police officer on the phone in order to work through the possibility that someone was misusing his identity.

The uniformed police officer, with whom Bahuguna connected via a WhatsApp video call, listed crimes that he claimed to find under the influencer's name, such as money laundering and drug trafficking. "And he starts interrogating me by taking the names of some criminals and asking me about my association with them," Bahuguna added.

Raising awareness on the matter, the influencer emphasised that the way these scammers break their victim is by making their tricks believable, which causes the victim to give into their methods in desperation to eliminate their perils. After convincing him that his loved ones were under threat as well, they reassured him that they were on his side.

"I was not allowed to pick up calls or message people or let anybody in the house. I had to switch off every gadget in my house. They extracted every possible information out of me. That was my second biggest mistake," he confessed, mentioning that he was told to position himself a certain way in front of the camera at all times.

"I was crying and asking them if I can inform the people trying to check up on me, but they said that this is a secret and if I told anybody, they would arrest me. And also that these people's lives would be in danger if I contacted them," he said.

Bahuguna stressed that his mistake was buying into their first lie, due to which he got roped into this vicious series of more frightening lies. As the matter escalated, he was told to visit a bank to make some suspicious transactions, though even then he was too rattled to suspect anything.

He credited the quick thinking of his friends for helping him get out of the situation. When they noticed how unusual his behaviour seemed, they persistently checked up on him until they figured out that he was being weighed down by a notorious scam. Their assistance helped him escape the situation.

The matter has dulled down since then, allowing the influencer to relax and relay his experience as a cautionary tale for his followers. "I've taken a day to process this, and now my friends and I just make fun of this," he reassured.