The Navi Mumbai Police have arrested Umang Vijaybhai Lakod, 24, for his alleged role in an international cyber fraud network that swindled a Navi Mumbai resident of nearly ₹1.55 crore through a digital arrest scam. Lakod, a resident of Amraiwadi in Ahmedabad, was arrested from Vadodara on July 3 following a technical investigation into the fraud.
Police allege Lakod activated and smuggled more than 1,000 SIM cards to Cambodia, where transnational cybercriminals used them to target victims across India.
How the Fraud Was Carried Out
According to police, the victim was targeted between March 23 and March 31, 2026. Fraudsters contacted him through WhatsApp and Signal, posing as Anti-Terrorism Squad officers. They sent a forged arrest warrant along with a fake letter carrying the Reserve Bank of India’s name and logo, designed to convince him he faced imminent legal action.
The fraudsters then placed the victim under a so-called digital arrest through sustained video calls, using fear and psychological pressure to keep him compliant. Claiming that money transfers were necessary to avoid arrest, they forced him to move ₹1,54,98,000 into multiple bank accounts controlled by the syndicate.
Investigators traced the fraud by analysing the WhatsApp accounts, Signal profiles and mobile numbers used in the crime, work that eventually led them to Lakod. Police recovered 347 SIM card pouches from various telecom providers, three mobile phones, two debit cards, six cheque books, a bank passbook and two Aadhaar cards from him.
A Supply Chain Feeding Cambodia’s Scam Economy
Lakod’s alleged role sits inside a much larger and increasingly documented pipeline. The Enforcement Directorate recently uncovered a Rajasthan-based network in which point-of-sale telecom vendors misused activation systems to fraudulently register SIM cards, later found among roughly 36,000 Indian numbers being operated out of Cambodia, with nearly 5,300 directly linked to fraud cases worth hundreds of crores.
A similar racket busted in Telangana earlier this year found more than 600 Indian SIM cards smuggled abroad since 2023, procured using forged documents or by misusing unsuspecting citizens’ identity credentials without their knowledge. In several of these cases, arrested operators were themselves running authorised telecom point-of-sale centres, using their legitimate access to route pre-activated SIMs straight into the hands of overseas fraud rings.
The reason Indian SIM cards command such value abroad is straightforward: they lend a false sense of legitimacy. Calls placed from familiar Indian mobile numbers make victims far more likely to trust the caller, a credibility Cambodia-based syndicates exploit deliberately when impersonating police, tax officials or banking authorities.
The Scale of Cambodia’s Scam Compounds
Cambodia’s role in this ecosystem is no longer in dispute. A nationwide crackdown there earlier this year shut down roughly 200 scam centres, with one facility found displaying Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar imagery alongside forged Central Bureau of Investigation and Mumbai Police insignia, props used specifically to defraud Indian victims. Many of the workers inside these compounds are themselves trafficked, lured abroad through fake job offers before being forced to run the very scams targeting their compatriots.
Nationally, the toll from this ecosystem has been severe. Indians lost an estimated ₹22,495 crore to cyber fraud in 2025, and authorities responded by deactivating 1.2 million fraudulent SIM cards and freezing 1.33 million mule accounts over the same period, underscoring both the scale of the problem and the scale of the crackdown now underway.
Expert Warning and What Citizens Should Know
Prof. Triveni Singh, the former IPS officer and cybercrime specialist, said international fraud syndicates increasingly rely on illegally procured SIM cards, encrypted messaging platforms and fake digital identities to operate across borders with relative impunity. Digital arrest scams, he said, are engineered specifically to exploit fear and urgency, convincing victims they are genuinely under official investigation.
He stressed that no law enforcement agency in India conducts arrests, investigations or financial verification through video calls, nor does any agency demand money transfers to avoid legal action. He urged citizens to disconnect immediately from such calls, verify any claim through official channels, and report incidents at once to the National Cyber Crime Helpline at 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
Police have separately cautioned the public against downloading unknown files or responding to unsolicited messages on WhatsApp, Telegram or Instagram offering task-based jobs or unusually high investment returns, noting that the same social engineering playbook now underpins most large-value cyber frauds nationwide. The investigation into Lakod’s wider network remains ongoing, with police working to identify additional members and trace the proceeds of crime.
