The Cyber Crime Wing of Tamil Nadu Police has arrested four individuals, including a woman named K. Shobana from Pollachi, for their alleged involvement in a cyber fraud operation linked to a digital arrest scam. The arrests took place on Sunday following a detailed probe into a complaint filed by a Vellore district resident.
The complainant was duped into transferring Rs81.7 lakh by fraudsters who posed as officials from Bengaluru police, accusing him falsely of involvement in human trafficking and an overseas job racket. The money was extracted under the pretext of identity verification.
Investigators tracked the funds to a bank account held by K. Shobana, who confessed that she opened the account under the direction of her brother M. Suresh, who promised her a commission and claimed the account would support an online gaming business.
Suresh then led the police to S. Senthil Kumar, a cattle feed merchant from Coimbatore, who was managing multiple fraudulent accounts. The scam further unraveled to include Shobana’s husband, S. Karthik Raja, who had been approached by a man named Piyush—introduced via Suresh—as part of the same fake business scheme.
Piyush offered a 2% commission on profits and requested Karthik to open a bank account, activate net banking, and hand over access credentials. As Karthik is physically disabled, his elder brother Prabhu, a truck driver, personally traveled to Lucknow to deliver the banking kit to Piyush.
On January 2 and 3, a total of Rs12 lakh was deposited into Shobana’s account. All four individuals—Shobana, Suresh, Senthil Kumar, and Karthik Raja—have been arrested and remanded to judicial custody.
Police have registered over 350 digital arrest scam complaints on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) in 2025 so far. Investigations are underway to identify more individuals linked to the network.
