New Delhi: A few lakh rupees here, a few crores there, and once as much as Rs 23 crore. With relentless regularity, cyber fraudsters have stolen a cumulative Rs 1,250 crore from unsuspecting victims in Delhi region alone in the last one year, officials said Monday.
The nationwide figure is believed to be around Rs 20,000 crore or as much as the budget of a small state.
The new-age dacoity once again came to the forefront of public consciousness last week with a Rs 14.85 crore fraud perpetrated on a senior citizen couple in Greater Kailash colony of New Delhi, leaving them nearly penniless and the community in shock at how easily the cyber thieves are able to manipulate their victims.
Repeated public service messaging by authorities has not deterred or reduced the crime. In 2024, police said the criminals -- almost always based in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and working mostly on the behest of Chinese handlers -- collectively stole Rs 1,100 crore in Delhi.
The figure for 2025 jumped to about Rs 1,250 crore, a senior police officer said. The only silver lining is that the recovery rate too jumped from 10 per cent in 2024 to 24 per cent in 2025.
That is of little consolation for 81-year-old Om Taneja and his wife Indira, 77, who were conned over a 16-day period through the now-familiar stratagem -- digital arrest, a non-existent tool in the law that the criminals have used with impunity over the last three to four years when the fraud was first started being observed.
“We have lost all of our life’s savings now. The cyber fraudsters repeatedly threatened us with arrest and serious consequences,” Om Taneja stated.
He said his wife was approached on WhatsApp by a caller who claimed to be from the telecom department. Using a tried-and-tested spiel that her phone was being used for illegal activities, the caller and his associates sucked the couple into a deepening web of deceit built on fear and their willingness to
abide by the law.
While placed under “digital arrest” from December 24 to January 9, they gave away their entire life savings in several chunks of about Rs 2 crore, drawn from their savings accounts and by liquidating their mutual funds.
In the wake of the case, another senior police officer, explaining the modus operandi of such scammers, said that digital arrest cases, along with investment frauds, have emerged as two of the most common ways in which people are losing their hard-
earned money.
Investigators said most of these fraudsters operate out of Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, where large-scale “scam compounds” run by Chinese handlers target victims across the world.
Police said fraudsters use illegal SIM boxes to mask international calls as local ones and launder money through mule accounts. Authorities are running awareness drives, coordinating with banks, and urging victims to report cyber fraud promptly on helpline 1930 to improve recovery
chances. with agency inputs