A 21-year-old man from Goregaon fell prey to 'sextortion' when he accepted an unknown friend request on a social media site. The victim was lured into a trap and later threatened for money. When this did not end for several months, even after paying the extortion amount, he finally approached the cops and registered an offence.
According to the Dindoshi police, the incident began in May, when a graphic designer replied to a message from an unknown sender on a popular photo sharing application. As soon as he replied, he received a video call, where he saw a nude woman for 2 to 3 seconds before the call disconnected. The caller then started chatting with the victim in a vulgar way. The caller also made the victim to perform sexual acts in front of the camera during another video call.
The caller then asked for his mobile number and shared screenshots of the video in which the victim was recorded performing sexual acts and started demanding Rs 20,000 for deleting the video, failing which the caller would make the video viral on social media and also threatened to share the video to his relatives.
The victim, who was shattered by then, sent Rs 2000. However, the fraudster stressed on his demand and threatened the victim to share the video with a girl from his contact list. The victim then transferred the remaining Rs 18,000.
For over a month, the victim did not receive any messages. However, in July, he again received 'sextortion' messages on his social media account. The victim blocked the account from which he received the messages. However, later, he started receiving messages from another account, asking to pay the money in return for not sending the videos to his friends.
Fed up of the harassment, the boy finally approached the Dindoshi police station and registered his complaint. An offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section of extortion (384), intentional insult (504), criminal intimidation (506) and under the section of Information Technology Act was registered against an unknown accused. However no one has been arrested yet.
Cyber crime investigator Pushkar Zantye said, some people use webcams for flirting and cybersex, and unwittingly end up falling prey to cyber criminals in the process. These criminals befriend their victims online using a fake identity and urge them to perform sexual acts in front of their webcam. In many cases, an attractive woman is used to lure the victim to go along with the demands.
Many people have become the victim of 'sextortion'. However, in a bid to maintain discretion, many people chose not to complain and ended up paying up the extortion amount, hoping to settle the issue. However, in most of the cases, the issue doesn't settle that easily, added Zantye.
