More than 38 lakh cyber fraud complaints were reported on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal between its launch in 2021 and February 2025, the Union government said on Wednesday.

Most of these complaints were registered in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Telangana, the Union home ministry told Parliament.

The complainants reported a loss of Rs 36,448 crore, or $4.2 billion, to cyber frauds. Most of these losses were from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

Of this, Rs 4,380 crore has been frozen in bank accounts, while about Rs 60.5 crore has been refunded.

The data was provided as part of the response to an MP’s questions about measures that the Union government had taken to stop cyber frauds.

Responding to a separate question, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Wednesday that Indians had lost Rs 2,576 crore to “digital arrest scams and related cybercrimes” between 2022 and February 2025.

More than 2.4 lakh complaints about “digital arrests” have been reported on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal during this period.

The year 2024 recorded the highest number of complaints (1.2 lakh) and losses (Rs 1,935 crore).

In cases of “digital arrest”, criminals usually orchestrate the fraud by posing as law enforcement officers, often wearing uniforms and making video calls to victims from locations made to resemble government offices or police stations. They demand money for a “compromise” and “closure of a case” against the victims.

In some cases, the victims are “digitally arrested” with the scamsters claiming that the persons are required to be visible until their demands are met.

In October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cautioned citizens against this method of cyber fraud.

The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, which monitors cyber crimes at the national level, found that 46% of the cyber frauds reported between January 2024 and April 2024 originated in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, The Indian Express reported in October.

In January, Scroll published a series of extensive reports about Chinese crime syndicates that run cyber crime centres from Southeast Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These highly sophisticated “scam compounds” are staffed with thousands of people, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.

Read Scroll’s reportage of the cyber-scam centres:

However, those who make scam calls from such centres are victims themselves, having been lured into going abroad through fake job offers, Scroll found. When they tried to leave, they were “beaten mercilessly”.

In May, India’s external affairs ministry warned citizens against fake job offers in Cambodia and Laos, and urged them to seek employment only through authorised agents approved by the government.

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