The Cyber Crime Branch of the Ahmedabad Police has arrested four men for allegedly using artificial intelligence tools, including Google Gemini, to create deepfake videos and bypass Aadhaar verification systems.
The fraud came to light when a city-based businessman involved in import-export noticed he had stopped receiving OTP alerts from his bank for two days. Sensing irregularities, he approached the police.
Investigators later found that the mobile number linked to his Aadhaar had been changed without any OTP verification. His biometric data had also been manipulated. The accused allegedly used deepfake videos of the victim to bypass Aadhaar authentication, allowing them to redirect OTPs to their own number.
Using the victim’s credentials, the gang opened a bank account and secured a loan of ₹25,000. They also attempted to access his DigiLocker account to retrieve personal documents.
Police said the accused tried to open accounts across three banks using e-KYC, but succeeded only with Jio Payments Bank, through which the loan was processed. One of the arrested individuals reportedly worked at a Common Service Centre and misused official Aadhaar access systems to facilitate the fraud.
The accused have been identified as Kanubhai Parmar, Ashish Vanand, Mohammad Kaif Patel, and Deep Gupta. Officials described the method used as highly sophisticated and concerning.
The case comes amid growing concerns over AI-driven cyber threats. Recently, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a high-level meeting with banking officials to assess risks posed by advanced AI tools, including scrutiny around systems like Claude Mythos developed by Anthropic.
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