Threatened to post morphed pics on porn sites, cabbie extorts 24 women; arrested

Cab driver arrested for allegedly extorting money from at least 24 women by hacking their social media accounts and blackmailing them with morphed photos.

A cab driver has been arrested for allegedly extorting money from at least 24 women by hacking their social media accounts and blackmailing them by threatening to upload their morphed photographs on porn websites.

The police said the accused had started hacking social media accounts of women during the Covid lockdown as he did not have any source of income.

The accused has been identified as Ajay alias Vinod Kishanrao Mundhe, 25, a resident of Gautam Nagar in Parbhani district.

According to the VP Road police, Mundhe used to send messages to women on Facebook along with a link which enabled him to hack their social media account once the recipients clicked on it.

“Once having access to the Facebook accounts of the unsuspecting girls and women, he would send the links to their friends and hack their accounts as well,” Santosh Dhanavate, police inspector, said.

The accused then used to send messages to the girls, saying that their photos or videos have been uploaded on porn websites, the police said and added that he used to send them their morphed photos and demanded money to remove them.

“He would accept smaller amounts like ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 as he thought that demanding lesser amounts would not prompt the women to report the incidents to the police. However, three women approached us and the accused was picked up from Latur. He used to frequent Latur, Nanded, Parbhani and Parali,” Rahul Patil, police sub inspector, said.

“Two women in Sindhudurg district and one in Mumbai registered cases against him. We have found that he has extorted 24 women till now,” Patil said.

The police said the accused had started hacking social media accounts during the Covid lockdown as he did not have any source of income.

The police said the accused even worked for a cab aggregator as a driver and kept on leaving and joining jobs. The accused has been booked for cheating, cheating by personation and under various sections of the Information Technology Act.