Parel resident losses ₹3.85 lakh to sextortion racket

MUMBAI: A Parel resident has suffered a loss of ₹3

MUMBAI: A Parel resident has suffered a loss of ₹3.85 lakh after a sextortion gang trapped him using an intimate video call by a woman. The accused gang members posed as CBI officer and YouTube executives to extract money from the businessman.

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The Bhoiwada police have registered an offence in connection with the matter and are investigating it.

The 40-year-old complainant, who owns a hardware shop in Nana Chowk, Grant Road, on March 7 got a video call from an unknown number. On answering it, he saw a nude woman. He immediately disconnected the call.

A few minutes later he received a video on his WhatsApp from an unknown number. On playing the video, he saw a brief recording of the video call, which was made to him by a woman a few minutes ago.

“The video was morphed in such a manner that the complainant was shown enjoying the intimate video call with the woman,” said a police officer. After this he received a text message from the sender of the video, who demanded money by threatening to upload the video clip on social media, he added.

Scared, the complainant sent ₹32,000 in different transactions to the sender, the police officer said adding, the next day the complainant received a call from a person named Madhun Ram Pandey, who claimed to be a CBI officer from Delhi. Pandey told the complainant that his morphed video had been uploaded on YouTube and the CBI had also received a complaint regarding the same.

Pandey suggested that the complainant should call YouTube helpline manager Sanjay Singh and get his obscene and morphed video deleted from the video sharing platform, the police complaint stated.

The complainant then contacted Singh on the number shared by Pandey. “Singh made the complainant pay more money under the pretext of various fees and penalties for ‘deleting’ the video and ultimately sent an acknowledgement message to the complainant showing that the said video has been deleted from YouTube,” said another officer from the Bhoiwada police station.

The complainant forwarded the same to CBI officer Pandey, who then told him that he and a DIG rank officer from CBI will send a letter to YouTube about their investigation and after that YouTube will refund all the money to the complainant. Pandey demanded and accepted ₹50,000 for this, the FIR stated.

Later, Pandey told the complainant that the woman who had made the intimate video call to him, had died by suicide and the complainant had been named in the case. Pandey demanded ₹2,00,000 from the complainant to close the case.

This is when the complainant realised that he was being cheated and approached the police.

“We have written to the service providers seeking details of the mobile numbers and the bank accounts used for receiving extortion money. The investigation is in progress,” the police officer said.