1 week Ago By H M Chaithanya Swamy
Bengaluru: A 37-year-old man lost Rs 5.5 lakh to sextortionists within 24 hours of accepting a Facebook friend request from a profile that posed as a female doctor. Aarav (name changed), a Cox Town resident, employed at a private firm, filed a complaint earlier this month.
Even though he didn't know the ‘woman' personally, he believed it to be a genuine profile. With no initial messages from the profile, Aarav's curiosity led him to reach out first. "I asked her why she sent me a friend request," he told police.
On April 18, she replied, and after exchanging a few casual messages, she asked for his phone number. Aarav shared his secondary mobile number rather than his primary one. "She messaged me from 9832076921.
She said she was from Delhi, and I told her I lived in Bengaluru. Our chats went on late into the night," he stated in his complaint. The caller then initiated a WhatsApp video call, during which Aarav saw pornographic content.
A woman appeared naked on the screen. Aarav told police that he couldn't fully understand what was happening, but felt something was off. He claimed he tried to block the number, but before he could, he received another call from a different number — 7328018478.
The new caller claimed there was a complaint against Aarav for engaging in an obscene video call with a woman. They showed him a pornographic video, allegedly morphed using his face and recorded during the call, and blackmailed him. Threatening to circulate the clip among his Facebook friends, the caller pressured Aarav into paying ransom.
Scared and confused, he gave in. Initially, he was asked to pay Rs 1 lakh. After paying through a digital payment app, he received another call from the same number.
This time, a different person who claimed to be the "Boss" continued to threaten him with circulating the video to his contacts and on social media, if he didn't pay more. By 10 pm on April 19, Aarav had transferred Rs 5.5 lakh in multiple transactions.
A senior police officer said, "We are checking if the videos shown were morphed." A case has been filed under the Information Technology Act and BNS Section 318 (cheating)..
