Six members of an extortion gang have been arrested from Rajasthan for allegedly duping people after befriending them on social media and later threatening to upload their morphed videos online, the Delhi police said on Wednesday.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime Unit) Anyesh Roy said that the accused have been identified as Waris (28), Rayees (22), Annay Khan (21), Wahid (23), Mufeed (30) and Akram (21) who were allegedly running the extortion racket from a village in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur.
The police said that according to the complaints received by them, the victims were contacted over social media platforms such as Facebook. The victims were engaged in a brief chat and guided to a video call over Messenger or WhatsApp.
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Obscene clip
During the call, the victims were shown an obscene clip and their video call was simultaneously recorded. After sometime, they got extortion calls in the name of the offensive video made from the captured video chat. Amounts ranging from ₹2,000 to ₹30,000 were demanded and some of the victims succumbed to those demands before reporting it to the police.
Using technical help, the location of the accused was zeroed in to Bharatpur, Rajasthan. Later, in coordination with Bharatpur police, the hideouts of the gang were identified and raids were conducted. Six accused were arrested, Mr. Roy said.
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The police said that the accused created fake Facebook profiles and befriended random people. After chatting for a while, they would get the victims on video call. They would then capture the video call and edit it to include an offensive adult content, they said.
These morphed videos were then used to blackmail their targets. Offensive videos of more than 40 victims have been recovered from the mobile phones of the accused who have cheated victims to the tune of ₹25 lakh and 10 bank accounts linked to the gang have been identified and frozen.