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Online scammers drove Ghaziabad senior citizen to brink of suicide
The man was shown some morphed picture of him with a naked woman. He later received a video call from a man, who identified himself as a senior police officer and alleged that he is being made an accused in a suicide case of the woman, say police
LUCKNOW/GHAZIABAD A Ghaziabad-based septuagenarian faced extortion and was pushed to the verge of suicide by alleged online scammers, who used a deepfake image of a retired ADG rank IPS officer to threaten and harass him.
The 76-year-old man’s daughter countered the online extortionists and lodged an FIR with the Kavi Nagar police station of Ghaziabad on Monday. The police registered an FIR under Section 66D of IT Act (cheating by personation through communication device).
Deepfakes refer to digitally altered media (audio or video) of a person to make him or her appear to be someone else.
ACP (Kavi Nagar) Abhishek Srivastava said the harassment began over a month ago when Arvind Sharma, 76, a resident of Harsaav Govindpuram, bought an Android phone and made a Facebook profile. He received a video call on the app on October 20 which he answered, police said, adding that on the other side of the call was a naked woman. Sharma ended the call but his trouble began from there.
“The elderly person was shown some morphed picture of him with the naked woman. He later received a video call from a man, who identified himself as a senior police officer from Dwarka and alleged that he is being made an accused in a suicide case of the woman,” the ACP said.
Sharma got scared and deposited ₹24,000 into the account number given by the accused. He later borrowed ₹50,000 and sent it too. The extortionist, however, demanded more money from him. Scared of his name being sullied and unable to arrange any more money, the elderly was pushed to the brink of suicide. The amount was transferred to a private bank account in the name of one Raju, son of Hari Singh.
Finally, he confided in his family and his daughter approached the police.
“We came to know that a deepfake video of a retired IPS officer from UP, Prem Prakash, was shown to the elderly as the senior officer from Dwarka. A case regarding the incident has been registered and investigations are underway,” he added.
“It appears that the online scammers morphed an old video of the retired officer by changing the audio and background voice. On close examination, the voice and lip movement do not sync. It can be said to be a morphed or deepfake video,” said another police officer privy of the investigation.
Ghaziabad commissioner of police Ajay Mishra said it seemed to be a case of deepfake using the photograph of a retired ADG rank officer Prem Prakash, but it is still to be crosschecked through forensic examination. He said the Ghaziabad police were also in touch with the retired officer and had also written to Meta for assistance in the case.
People familiar with the retired ADG confirmed that they had seen the video, and it was a clear case of deepfake as the voice of the caller was very different from the ADG. Inputs from PTI
