Producer duped of ₹23L by frauds posing as OTT employees

Two men have allegedly defrauded a content producer of ₹23 lakh by posing as employees of an online streaming service and assuring him that his web series will be featured on their platform. The accused have been booked on charges of breach of trust and fraud.

MUMBAI: Two men have allegedly defrauded a content producer of ₹23 lakh by posing as employees of an online streaming service and assuring him that his web series will be featured on their platform, according to a complaint filed with the police.

HT Image

As per the complaint lodged by producer Vijay Mulchandani, who owns Yashasvi films, he met the two accused — Ajay Kanojiya and Abhay Shankar — when he was pitching his forthcoming 10-episode web series to streaming platforms.

The duo was introduced to him one year back as employees of a leading over-the-top (OTT) streaming service. And since then, the accused have taken ₹23 lakh in all from the complainant, according to his statement to Amboli Police.

“I had shared the pilot episode with them, based on which they told me I could sell the rights of the show for at least ₹2 crore which they said they could help with,” Mulchandani told the police.

“However, they also said that I will have to pay a couple of employees of the platform in exchange for them promoting my show in front of their higher-ups,” he said.

Police said that the accused not only brought a fake executive of the platform to the complainant’s office but also sent the producer mails from an e-mail address that appeared like the official account of the company’s employees.

“This email address was used to send Mulchandani a copy of the contract between his production house and the platform, wherein his show was valued at ₹2.8 crore,” said a police official.

“Through this account, he was also told to hand over the hard disc with all the episodes of the show to a person the company would send over for the purpose, which he did in October,” said an official from Amboli police.

Subsequently, the accused duo asked for more money to be paid to executives at different levels of the OTT to ensure that it is bought by the platform. In all, they took ₹23 lakh from the complainant for this, said the police official.

“He started asking the accused repeatedly about the final contract signing, and even sent several mails to what he thought was their official email address. In January, he received a mail from the company saying that they were no longer interested in his show,” said the officer.

On confronting the accused about all the money given to the executives, they didn’t have any satisfactory response. The complainant also told the police that a couple of months later, he asked around other industry contacts and was told his show was never pitched to or seen by the executives at the platform.

“We received an official written complaint from him, based on which we registered the FIR against the two accused. They have been booked on charges of breach of trust and fraud under the Indian Penal Code and the applicable sections of the Information Technology Act,” said the policeman.

He added that all the email threads with ‘the platform’ and the WhatsApp conversations with the two accused have been provided by the complainant which are being investigated.