Hyderabad: An 80-year-old retired employee from Tolichowki lost over Rs 19 lakh to fraudsters posing as stock market advisors after clicking on a deceptive link while browsing news online, cybercrime police said. The crime was committed over a incident occurred within a 10-day span this month. Following his complaint, the cybercrime team registered a case on Monday.Earlier, on July 22, a 79-year-old retired banker from Domalguda lodged a complaint with Hyderabad police, alleging that he had lost over Rs 35 lakh to fraudsters masquerading as officers from CBI and Mumbai Crime Branch. They threatened to arrest him in a fabricated money laundering case. On the same day, Telangana cyber security bureau’s Warangal branch registered a ‘digital arrest’ case following a complaint from a 70-year-old victim from Hanumakonda, who had lost Rs 51 lakh to fraudsters posing as officers of CBI and Bengaluru police.Though digital arrest and investment fraud cases have reduced from 1,631 and 10,772 in the first half of 2024 to 905 and 8,866 in 2025, respectively, recording a decline of 45% and 18% cases, the reduction in the senior citizen category was 33% in digital arrest cases and 41% in investment fraud cases.‘Large chunk of digital arrest victims are elderly’ “It has been observed that a significant chunk of the victims in digital arrest cases are senior citizens in the 60-80 age-group who are educated and retired professionals whose children are found to be living or working abroad. The fraudsters call the victims, posing as CBI or crime branch officers, send fake arrest and non-bailable warrants, fake court orders and force them to transfer money for RBI verification. Due to increased awareness, the number of cases involving senior citizens in Telangana reduced from 18 in 2024 to 12 in 2025. We’re expecting a further decline in the near future,” a cybercrime officer said.In the first half of 2024, senior citizens had lost money in 70 cases involving fraudsters posing as bank executives attempting to redeem credit card reward points for the victims. However, this year, only five such cases have been reported, marking a decline of 93%. Similarly, senior citizens who lost money to sextortion rackets, where fraudsters threaten to leak nude photos of the victim, decreased drastically from eight in 2024 to zero so far this year.Surprisingly, while the general trend of customer care frauds fell by 35% from 7,958 in 2024 to 5,212 cases in 2025, incidents involving senior citizens increased from 99 in 2024 to 145 in 2025. Additionally, fraudsters offering loans managed to trick seven senior citizens in 2025, compared to two such victims last year.
