How Scammers Use Deepfakes, Fake Calls & OTP Fraud | Sunil Bajpai | FO543 Raj Shamani
August 1, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 2023, Indians lost at least 54,000 crore rupees to online scams, but because only about 10% of victims ever report the crime, the real figure is likely several times higher. Globally, the online scam industry is estimated at 1.03 trillion dollars per year—roughly 0.9% of world GDP. These numbers are not the work of isolated criminals in small towns; they represent a trillion-dollar industry with its own supply chain, tools, and labor force.
Why Intelligent People Fall for Obvious Traps
The most common public narrative is that scam victims are gullible or uneducated. Sunil Bajpai, former senior official at India's telecom regulator TRAI and now Chief Trust Officer at Tanla Platforms, argues the opposite. The victims in headline-grabbing cases—a Padma Bhushan awardee, a retired Supreme Court judge, a senior software engineer—are often successful, educated people with a lot to lose.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:03) **How a Scammer Operates** - The core pattern of a scam: an authority figure creates a problem, then poses as a friendly helper to solve it.
- 2 (00:42) **The Scam Industry's Structure: Procurement** - How scammers source the raw material—your personal information.
- 3 (01:19) **The Five Warning Signs of a Scam** - A simple five-test framework to identify and stop a scam before you lose money.
- 4 (03:46) **Building Trust in a World of Scams** - The evolution of trust from small communities to large institutions and the modern challenge of digital scams.
- 5 (07:21) **Anatomy of a High-Profile Scam: The S.P. Oswal Case** - A detailed breakdown of how a Padma Bhushan awardee was duped of 7 crore rupees.
- 6 (09:24) **The Emotional Hijack and Cognitive Traps** - Why intelligent, successful people fall for scams, and how the scammer keeps them trapped.
- 7 (13:50) **Digital Arrest: The Escalation and the Bribery Trap** - How a small payment leads to a cycle of escalating demands and a false sense of criminality.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Checkout Tanla here: https://www.tanla.com/
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Disclaimer: This video is intended solely for educational purposes and opinions shared by the guest are his personal views. We do not intent to defame or harm any person/ brand/ product/ country/ profession mentioned in the video.
Our goal is to provide information to help audience make informed choices. The media used in this video are solely for informational purposes and belongs to their respective owners.
(00:00) - Intro
(03:41) - How to Build Trust: The Chief Trust Officer Explains
(07:09) - Inside the SP Oswal Digital Arrest Scam: How It Happened Step by Step
(14:42) - Why Your Brain Gets Hijacked in the First 90 Seconds of a Scam
(18:26) - Why Victims Keep Paying Even After Bribing "Officers"
(23:50) - The Heartbreaking Case of a Mother Who Died After a Fake Call
(26:44) - Are Scammers Victims Too?
(27:16) - India Loses ₹54,000 Crore to Scams Every Year: The Real Numbers
(30:48) - Inside the Scam Industry
(36:52) - How Scammers Buy Your Aadhaar Number and Phone Number for Just ₹100
(49:35) - 5 Warning Signs You're Being Scammed Right Now
(55:34) - Why Nobody Has an Incentive to Stop Scams
About Call Detection
(1:13:44) - How India Is Fighting Back: TRAI, AI Detection & the Indonesia Case Study
(1:23:10) - The Personal Cost of Becoming a Trustworthy Person
(1:28:50) - Outro
In today's episode, we sit down with Sunil Bajpai, Chief Trust Officer at Tanla Platforms, a man who has spent decades inside government and industry trying to understand how trust actually breaks down, and how scams have quietly become a trillion dollar global industry.
Follow Sunil Bajpai here:X: https://x.com/sunilbajpaiLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilbajpai1/Follow Tanla Here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tanla-platforms/?originalSubd
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