Man blackmails women with morphed photos

He would befriend them on social media using fake accounts; accused arrested

Vijay was arrested on Tuesday.

A man was arrested on Tuesday for creating fake social media accounts of women and morphing their picture to blackmail them, the police said on Thursday.

Complaint

The police said a woman had filed a complaint with the Cyber Cell against an unknown person for creating a fake Facebook account in her name.

She alleged that the user had uploaded her photo on the fake account, and was sending obscene messages and photographs to her on her real account.

The user was also allegedly sending friend requests to people in her friend list and morphed images of the complainant.

Investigation revealed that the fake social media account had 353 people on its friend list, and all of them were women. The complainant was also approached through various other social media accounts.

When she blocked the accounts, she started getting friend requests from other accounts. After accepting a few requests, she realised the requests had been sent using fake accounts and that all the accounts had been created by the accused.

“We approached Facebook for details of the fake account. After getting the details, the user was identified as Vijay, a resident of Gurugram. He was arrested. He has studied up to Class IX. He worked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport as a helper but quit his job recently and was unemployed,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime) Anyesh Roy.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that while working at the airport he started creating fake Facebook accounts in the name of women and would send friend requests to random women.

Many accepted his requests thinking the user was a woman.

“After the women accepted his friend request, he would access and download images from their accounts. Thereafter, he would approach them from accounts registered in the names of men. He would send vulgar messages to these women. If they refused to interact with him, he would send them morphed photographs,” said Mr. Roy.

He would morph their pictures using a photo-editing application.

The accused would also send the photos and forced them to chat with him. If they did not respond, he would threaten to upload the morphed pictures on Facebook, the police said.

Harassed 200 women

“He was in touch with more than 200 women, and had been harassing and blackmailing them by sending them morphed pictures. He was active on social media for the past one year. We have also seized two mobile phones from his possession,” Mr. Roy said.