Cyber Crime and Online Business

Social Off-topic & Debates
1

Hello All
I am Nitish Singh, a 21y/o Engineering student, who is running a self owned used PC parts reselling firm, for past 2 yrs.
I buy bulks, open box pallets, items from individuals, and sell them across various mediums (whatsapp, instagram, discord, facebook, techenclave).

I would like to highlight the recent incident, which has literally brought me to a complete stop at the moment.

→ DATE : 10th May, 2025 : I sold a 2tb Samsung NVME SSD for Rs. 8,000, to a guy from a whatsapp group. He finalized the deal, and got me a payment of Rs. 14,100 onto my Current account (SBI) via UPI. He told that he was gonna sell the nvme with a motherboard to the guy, so he got the total payment to me, and asked me to refund the extra 6.1k to him, which I did, the same day.

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DATE : 17th May, 2025 : I get a message saying the amount of Rs. 14,100 has been put on hold (most probably by cyber crime). went to branch, they confirmed its a hold from Cybercrime Patna Branch.

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Created a mess with the guy I sold the NVME to (buyer name - Tushar Jain, popularly known as RIG MENTOR pc builder store) ,and now he confessed that He sold CRYPTO to MAYANK, and took the payment directly on my bank acc, so that no. of transactions on his account stay less. Now I found out that the amount of Rs. 6100 which I refunded back, was to PULKIT M, not to Tushar Jain.
–Kind of he used me as a mode to transfer funds, probably he already knew this was about to happen, so stayed out of the mess.

He told later that he would send me 14.1k in a week or two, and once it gets released from my bank, I can send it back to him.
Been 2months, no response so far.

Called Mayank Ahuja (the guy who sent me money, i got his number from google pay transaction) he told that he was scammed by someone during his P2P transaction on Binance, and has filed a CyberCrime complaint on that scammer “SOHAIB”. He told me that Sohaib is the one who owns black money, Sohaib sent it to him (mayank), and since mayankk sent the amount to me (nitish), this was a chain of black money transactions, hence it has been put on hold on my end.
Also told that once this case is cleared, the hold would get removed.
Did tell me that If i was contacted by cybercrime authorities, i must state the truth - that i sold goods and for that, got the money.

DATE : 19th July, 2025 : I get a message from SBI, saying a STOP has been put on my account.

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Tried to withdraw cash, to check if its real real or a joke, turned out really bad.
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Called Mayank again, he told that he has now filed a FIR against SOHAIB, now god knows why did my account get completely FROZEN this time, as the complaint was on someone else, why tf did i get trapped.

NOW WHAT WILL I DO ?
MY OVERALL MONEY AND SAVINGS ARE ALL RIPPED APART WITH THE FREEZE OF MY CURRENT ACCOUNT
Monday I will go to bank and try to get as much info as possible, few people suggested me to file a legal complaint against TUSHAR JAIN, nd MAYANK AHUJA, about them using me as a bait in their scam chain.

Will def consider this idea, cuz anyhow I am not getting the refund from either of them, and both are giving unclear answers.

My only fear is that i dont wanna loose all this money, nor I wanna get stuck in legal issues.
I clearly state that i got the money by selling goods, and I have no relation with Crypto / Black money.

Need your tip for anything good that I could do, and anything that could go against me, where to be aware, safe, etc etc.
For evidence, I have chat on whatsapp, call recordings, shipping info etc etc.

WORST PART ACROSS ALL THIS
My dad handed over 2.7lakh to me, to keep, later told me use it if i need to invest in my business. I did spend all of it, along with my own money, and I have a solid bulk of goods in hand for sale.
Now, the construction of our new house has restarted (was paused for like 6months now), and now we would need money for it. Hence I was collecting money for past 2months, and managed to reach like 1.8lakh recently.
With the blockage of this account, my 65k has been frozen, which I can’t pull out.
Will be posting regular sale posts in the upcoming days. Taking payment on my friend’s bank acc, and taking cash from him, giving him 1% of all amount.
Feel free to take goods from me in case you need anything.

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2

This is why you & everyone else should be very careful while accepting payments online from random strangers or even those you know but don’t trust them enough to be financially aware about online scams & mule accounts. A bigger version of what happened with your current account:

Your only option is to go to Branch with an advocate/lawyer & persuade them to only place the lien on amount in question while unfreezing the remaining amount. Tell the advocate/lawyer to look up the links above to gather some legal material/insights to show to Branch Manager to persuade him to inform his superiors about your case.

For future reference, stop accepting money directly into your business bank current acc especially via upi. For this you need to get a payment gateway service like razorpay & integrate it into a website of yours to accept payment.

@aasimenator @Death_Pill @TheD4ddy @andrew327

For normal users accepting money in their normal savings bank acc in user-to-user listings I suggest to use gift cards especially amazonpay which can be used as cash at many online places by immediately adding them to your acc & pay some pending bill/mobile/dth recharge.

@Renegade Please pin this topic in this section or Classified/Retailers section because this issue is going to affect some users here definitely in the future.

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Thanks man, will look through these links
Again, thanks for the efforts to type this much of info out here!

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Have used amazon pay gift cards to pay couple of people here, quick and easy and no need to involve back accounts for small amounts atleast.

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Too much of a risk and hassle in every single thing in India, second @The_Eternal_Guest’s suggestion for a payment gateway.

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6

Hope no emergency funds are on that account. You should have somehow withdraw all the unaffected money through ATM and deposit it back to safer account at first most.

Now I believe it would be longer process to get your funds back

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7

Oh man. That’s terrible.

Same thing happened to me in 2022 December.

Around 13000 was held in my account due to a cybercrime case filed in Pune. I did not visit Pune or I never did any transaction with any Pune guy.

I contacted my bank (HDFC) and they provided me with the transaction details. Shockingly, it was an incoming transaction from a friend (40k approx)

I had lend some money to a friend and he returned it. I called him and asked about the same. He said he sold USDT to some guy and that’s how he got the money.

I contacted Pune cybercrime office multiple times through phones and emails. After 20 or more attempts someone picked the call and gave me another number to contact. The new guy asked me to send my AADHAAR Card to his WhatsApp. When I asked him whether masked card works or Driving Licence will do, he simply disconnected the call and never answered again.

I did mail them multiple times after with ID proof and masked AADHAAR. No response.

I contacted the nearest police station and they did not take my issue seriously, and told me to not give any details.

Later I came to know that my girlfriend’s salary account is affected too (as I sent her some money for an external HDD).

Fast forward to 2025 June.
On a fine day, I checked my account and the amount held was released. However, my gf still has her money on hold.

The right way is to communicate your innocence through email or through a lawyer if the amount is substantial. Don’t go for bribes. If you are lucky, you will get your money back in 2-3 years. There are big scams going around.

Learning from mistakes, I opened 2 more bank accounts and managing transaction accordingly. I never use UPI on my main account. Always use UPI Lite, Amazon Pay wallet, PayZapp for random UPI payments.

So far, all accounts are healthy and I prefer to keep it that way.

2 Likes
8

You can easily get the FIR number from NetBanking.
Persuading the bank manager is not useful. They are just following orders from cyber.

9

damn
it means it’s squal to never getting the amount back.

The main factor here is that my entire acc is frozen.
They already put a hold of 14.1k on my acc 2months ago, now why did they decide to freeze off the whole acc ???

10

Bank might have got another complaint on your account. Or the number of transactions are suspicious.

Banks can do this to small business owners.

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11

Dammit, this thread and your story are giving me a scare. I’ve been using my main account for random UPIs and thinking I am safe if I take common precautions. I need to get a ‘disposable’ account now. Ffs, everything in India is on hard mode these days.

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I learned it the hard way. Use UPI Lite at least. Best if you can use Amazon Pay wallet (KYC needed) or Payzapp (2L limit)

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I hadn’t realized this was a thing.

I’ve been happily taking UPI payments in my Salary account, blissfully.

Time to make use of my dormant PNB account.

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14

I’ve done a lot of P2P crypto trades before the crypto laws were introduced, so I understand how you’re feeling.

Your first priority should be getting your account unfrozen. If you don’t take any action, the police may not respond for years.

Here’s what you should do-

  1. File a complaint at your bank, saying that you sold goods in exchange for the payment you received. Show them any receipts or proof of trade.
    – They likely won’t take much action themselves, but they will ask you to visit the nearest cyber cell and get them to respond to the bank’s email to unblock your account.

  2. Take prints of all documents related to the case, and write a detailed application addressed to the SP.

Submit this to the cyber cell officers. Explain the entire case to them in detail.

If they are cooperative, your account may be unfrozen within 1–2 weeks.

  1. If possible, ask for the officer’s contact number so you can follow up. (But don’t overdo it.)

Some tips that helped me:

Pretend to be a student and don’t mention that the account has a large amount of money.

Say you recently started working on a small business, I know it sounds silly, but in my case, emotional framing worked .

I hope they donot ask for bribe, I strongly advise against giving bribes.

If none of this works, get a lawyer and file a case — eventually, you’ll need a court order to unfreeze your account.

also don’t be surprised that if you find all these name you said are same group of people , this is how they scam people. i had quite the experience with them.

also when you take payment always verify name with number and payment , you can easly do now with any upi apps.

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15

Happened to a friend of mine using paytm bank ac. They locked the whole account instead of the amount involved. Complained to RBI ombudsman, and then they called back. Later, froze only the amount involved.

Paytm bank service is a joke. No customer service. Registering complaint is hell. They delete all info after they deem it’s settled when the issue still persists. You cannot take screenshot on app to take down complaint history. Everything starts fresh when you have to complaint again or gather information.

Local Police do not have any how to deal with this. They are not trained on this. They just tell to contact cyber cell or bank. Basically, “contact bank” Then Bank tell, “contact cyber crime cell”

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16

Nothing feels safe here.

I am sorry to hear the trouble you must be going through @op .

Hope you find resolution soon.

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17

Sometimes it is not the police but bank itself only which took the action. See this whole video for reference (it’s in Hindi mostly)

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18

Will be visiting the branch tomorrow and try to get as much information as possible.
Have a known person in the city cyber crime cell, have done a complaint earlier when i got scammed off olx.

Will visit him this thursday.

19

Advocate here,
Sorry that this has happened to you but this has become a trend. (This is not to scare but only to provide info)
Complainant files an FIR
Police, without any detailed investigation, only finds out to whom the money went and
Then comes the kicker, irrespective of the amount of transfer or fraud alleged, the Police only sends letter to Bank to freeze the entire account.
Now, the person whose account has been frozen is the only one facing all the issues. The complexity increases in case the person whose account has been frozen and where the Complainant has filed the FIR are different cities / State.
Technically, for the person whose account has been frozen, is required to contact the police who has issued the request to freeze the account.
Now there are two options:

  1. Either you may contact the police who had issued the request to freeze account: Either explain your case to them and pray they will do their job OR they may ask for anywhere from 10-15% (standard ask) to lift the freeze.
    Typical case: A client of mine paid the amount to the Police and they sent a request to Bank to unfreeze. Then the Bank (State Bank) wanted to know what was going in the FIR or investigation and then they delayed unfreeze for another 5 months stating that investigation is still underway, how can we unfreeze.
  2. Contact a lawyer in the jurisdiction where the FIR has been filed and ask him to move an application before the court detailing the circumstances of transaction and either to seek lift of freeze of complete amount or if the court does not agree, submit that a freeze of only the transaction amount may be kept till investigation is complete (which may take time - months/years). Upon receipt of Court Order, Banks do oblige to unfreeze.

I would suggest you get details of FIR /Police Station that has requested the freeze from the Bank.
Use your contacts in Cyber Branch and get them to contact the Police Station rather than doing it yourself.
Filing a complaint against Bank would not be fruitful as the only reply would be that they had received a request from Police.

Considering how the talk with concerned Police goes, Consider further steps.

Edit: the 10-15% is true but of what keeps on varying with city and police. At times, it is the amount of transaction (14k in your case), at times it is the amount of fraud wherein only part payment has been made to one’s account and sometime (rare but has happened) of the amount lying in frozen account.

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20

oh, this is really bad and messy. you not only get scammed but also been put into a loop of fraudsters and lose system.

it was stated many times that only concern amount need to be on hold but our system…

taking payment is issue but what if someone intentionally send black money to my upi?

cybercrime phone support is null. their phone support people are really bad. you will personally need to visit them and i assume this all mess up will take months and more than that your sleep and giving alot of trauma and anxiety. :(]