Delhi man who targeted, blackmailed Instagram influencers arrested

The suspect, Juned Beg, would scan Instagram content for abusive language, get the account suspended by mass reporting it, and then dupe the account holder by offering to unblock the account

The police have arrested a 20-year-old man from south Delhi’s Jamia Nagar for extorting ₹90,000 from a woman by promising to retrieve her blocked Instagram account, investigators said on Thursday.

Juned Beg would specifically target Instagram accounts of influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers and a strong presence on the social media platform, said police officers. (Representational Image)

The suspect, Juned Beg, would scan Instagram content for abusive language, get the account suspended by mass reporting it, and then dupe the account holder by offering to unblock the account, said police officers associated with the case.

Beg would specifically target Instagram accounts of influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers and a strong presence on the social media platform, according to the police, who added that the total number of victims he allegedly extorted from is still unknown.

“While Beg’s tactic was to get his victims to pay up by promising to unblock suspended Instagram accounts or threatening to delete them permanently, he was only bluffing the entire time,” said M Harsha Vardhan, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka).

Since Beg confessed to learning this scam from his friends and was using phone numbers of some of his friends to mass report the Instagram accounts, the police are also looking into the role of some people known to him, according to DCP Vardhan.

Beg took advantage of the fact that if several people report abusive language in a video on Instagram to the social media site, the account can be blocked, according to DCP Vardhan. “As a result, he would use his friends’ phone numbers to mass report the accounts he was targeting,” he added.

Beg was apprehended from his home in Batla House near Jamia Nagar on Tuesday, according to officers associated with the case, who added that he had confessed to the crime. According to DCP Vardhan, Beg is educated up to Class 11 and works at his father’s family glass workshop. “He became friends with some criminal-type elements and began this scam,” said DCP Vardhan.

The police began searching for Beg after a woman influencer in west Delhi’s Dwarka visited the Dwarka cyber police station on March 29. “The woman had more than 800,000 Instagram followers, but her account was blocked,” said DCP Vardhan.

While the woman was desperate to reclaim her account, she received a message from Beg, posing as Sam, who claimed to have access and influence in the right places. Beg had obtained the woman’s phone number from one of her videos in which she had given out her contact information for paid promotions, as he usually did before mass reporting an account, according to DCP Vardhan.

Beg allegedly demanded ₹10,000 to assist her in unblocking her account, which the woman promptly transferred to him. According to Vardhan, the demand continued until the woman had paid Beg ₹90,000.

After that, when it appeared that the woman would no longer pay up, Beg convinced her that he was in control of her account, even though he was only bluffing the entire time, said officers familiar with the matter. “Toward the end of the fraud, Beg began extorting money from her by threatening to delete her account permanently,” said DCP Vardhan.

When the woman approached the police, they went to Instagram and discovered that her account was being mass reported. While the police were accessing all of the phone numbers used in the accounts to mass report the woman’s account, they were also gathering information on the person whose name and the Sim card used to make the alleged extortion calls were registered.

That Sim card turned out to belong to Beg, according to DCP Vardhan, who added that despite his efforts to target the woman, he was careless enough to use his own phone and Sim card.