A gang of youths who have been identified as Waris, Rayees, Annay Khan, Wahid, Mufeed and Akram who are residents of Bharatpur Rajasthan have been arrested the Cyber Cell of Delhi police after it unearthed a cybercrime racket were the culprits were allegedly extorting money from people on Facebook by blackmailing them.
According to Times of India (TOI), Delhi police Cyber Cell has arrested six men from Bharatpur Rajasthan who were allegedly running an online extortion racket and the police managed to recover ₹25 lakhs from 10 bank accounts and 40 victims have been identified.
The extortionists had a very simple modus Operandi wherein they would create fake profiles on Facebook and send friend requests to unsuspecting people who are mostly men over 50.
Once a relationship has been established, they would initiate a video call and then they would proceed to show them obscene videos over video calls and as they watched, the culprits would record them watching the video.
Now having leverage over the victims, they would pose as senior officials of social media platforms and would demand money for deleting the video.
According to DCP (Cyber Cell), Anyesh Roy, the Cyber Crime Unit received several complaints and upon investigating the online extortion racket, the police discovered that the culprits were blackmailing people by threatening to upload video were they are seen watching them.
DCP Roy said, “An inquiry revealed that the victims were contacted over social media platforms like Facebook. The victims were engaged in a brief chat and then asked to make a video call over Messenger or WhatsApp. The victims were shown adult clips and the video call was simultaneously recorded. After some time, they got extortion calls demanding ₹2,000-3,000”.
To maintain their anonymity, the extortionists used SIM cards and bank accounts obtained through fake IDs. They were very careful and would change the SIM cards, issued from different parts of the country, usually after a day or two.