A 75-year-old Hyderabad man fell prey to a sophisticated scam mimicking official election messages, highlighting the rising use of digital deception targeting older individuals and the need for heightened awareness.
A retired Reserve Bank of India employee in Hyderabad has reported losing Rs.3.50 lakh after falling for a fake Election Commission of India voter-verification message that arrived by SMS and WhatsApp, in a case that police say shows how fraudsters are increasingly using official-looking digital prompts to trick older victims. The complainant, 75-year-old Vishnu Mohan Venna of Ameerpet, told cybercrime police that he was asked to send his voter ID card, then directed to open a verification link and install an APK file, a type of Android application package often abused by scammers to gain access to phones. According to his complaint, the money disappeared from his accounts after a sequence of calls and messages that appeared to support the false verification process.
Venna said he was first instructed to share his identity document, then told that his name did not match his father’s name, before being pushed into filling in details on the fraudulent link. He also tried to make a token payment of Rs.5 when prompted, but the transaction failed. Soon afterwards, he received a video call in which the caller claimed that server problems were preventing the payment from going through and insisted on face verification. By evening, he had been alerted by his bank that Rs.3.25 lakh had been withdrawn without authorisation, and another Rs.2 lakh was moved between his accounts before he could secure a block on further transactions, police said.
The Hyderabad case fits a broader pattern of scams that use official branding, urgency and repeated calls to build trust. In Kolkata, a couple from Golpark lost Rs.17 lakh in a so-called digital arrest fraud, with scammers posing as officials from the Enforcement Directorate and the Reserve Bank of India and forcing frequent video check-ins. In a separate case in Mumbai, a retired RBI employee was cheated through a fake KYC verification link and lost more than Rs.3 lakh after clicking on a message that appeared to carry a bank logo. Similar tactics were used in Bengaluru, where another RBI employee was conned out of Rs.24.5 lakh after fraudsters claimed she was linked to a parcel and a money-laundering inquiry.
Police have booked the Hyderabad case under sections of the Information Technology Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and the complaint was also filed through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. The episode adds to growing concerns over scams that rely less on technical hacking than on social engineering, using phone calls, messaging apps and forged verification steps to pressure victims into handing over information or authorising transfers. Cybercrime investigators have repeatedly warned that genuine government agencies do not demand personal banking details, one-time verification payments or phone-based face checks in this way.
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