Mumbai: Accepting a friend request from an unknown woman on Instagram proved costly for a 26-year-old man, who lost Rs 2.50 lakh in five online transactions in one hour to the sextortionist.
According to the Dadar police, the complainant is a resident of Prabhadevi and works in a private bank. On August 15, around 1am, while checking his Instagram, he received a friend request from an unknown woman. The man accepted the request after which the two exchanged their WhatsApp numbers. Around 1.15am, he received a WhatsApp video call and on answering the call, the man was shocked to see a girl indulging in nudity and obscene acts and the call got disconnected.
Five minutes later, the said fraudster sent the recording of the said video call to the complainant on his WhatsApp along with a message “Send me money otherwise this video will be sent to all your Instagram contacts”. Then onwards, the scammers induced him to transfer the money. However, when the demand for money kept continuing, the man realised that he had been duped. He then approached the police and got an offence registered.
A case has been registered under sections 308 (extortion), 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act in the matter.
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