Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Dream of becoming one of the biggest hackers of the world landed a teenager in police custody in Singrauli district. The boy couldn't clear class 10 exam at least twice but he ensured that he didn't fail in his attempts to cheating and blackmailing people with his excellent knowledge on hacking.
Police officials suspect that the boy whose criminal bent of mind and computer knowledge left them surprised exploited sexually some girls too by blackmailing them. However, no one has come forward to lodge any complaint so far in connection with sexual exploitation.
Police say the boy didn’t attend any class for learning hacking, but used only Youtube videos and became master of using dark webs.
As he needed money to purchase applications and pursue online tutorials online to enhance his knowledge on hacking he used a part of the same money he got by way of blackmailing, to update himself and learn more and more on hacking.
The modus operandi of the accused was that he created a WhatsApp account using a mobile phone number that he anyhow got from Canada. He chatted with people while impersonating himself as an NRI girl and he recorded obscene videos and photos of the targets whom he called to later extort money from them.
He used to send the photos and videos to concerned people to extort money.
During Chatting on WhatsApp, he would hack the mobile phone of the person and would steal data including contact numbers, social media accounts, photographs and videos. And, later he would send obscene videos or photographs of the person concerned to his friends and family members.
Interestingly, he would send those photographs on his WhatsApp and would approach the person and show that a girl had sent these messages to him. Later, he would extend help and charge money.
According to police, the boy, 16, is a class-10 student. He was arrested from his house in Morwa town of Singrauli district on Monday.
“His parents had purchased a laptop on his birthday two years ago. Since, he spent more than 15 hours in a day with his laptop. He has failed in class-10 twice,” said in Charge of Morwa police station, Manish Tripathi.
Tripathi further said that a family, who lives in the accused's neighbour, lodged a complaint that they were being some online hackers for a long time. “They had been fed up with harassment. In fact, most of the family members have stopped using smartphones, as their phone used to ring anytime without any phone calls,” he said.
Tripathi said that family members told police that a teenager boy living in their neighbour charged money but resolved the problem for some times. “On suspicion, we rounded up the teenager, who split the beans,” he said.
During the course of investigation, the accused teenager revealed that he first learnt how to change the GPS location of the device he was using. Later, he started using hacking applications which are banned in India. “By changing his GPS location, he managed to access several banned hacking applications. Through those applications, he used to purchase several hacking study materials. He started extorting money from people so that he could purchase hacking materials from the dark web,” said a police officer.
Police sources said that the accused have targeted more than two dozen people in the past few months. However, no one came forward to lodge a complaint.
