Mumbai: Five YouTubers, who owned a YouTube channel – Crime Discovery Crime – would post an online advertisement for a massage service and later pose as masseurs. They would go with their paraphernalia and equipment to first ensure that customers strip to their bare minimum; then, they would lie and say that they were shooting promotional videos; later, they would threaten to upload videos of the customers in a compromising position, unless the latter forked out a huge sum.
In one such case, an Amboli-based senior citizen was duped and told to cough up Rs 25 crore. Obviously, the conmen would do their homework and zero in on rich senior citizens, ideally widowers. Except in this case, the senior citizen went to the police. Last week, a senior citizen read an advertisement on an online portal offering a full body massage at home.
The company sent a team of five people, four masseurs and masseuse, to the complainant’s home in Amboli. He was asked to strip to bare minimum and while the masseurs were giving him a massage, the masseuse arranged the oil placement, handed out towels and massaged the man’s feet.
Soon after the foot massage, the woman, identified as Lucky Mishra, started filming the activity in the room, claiming it was for the company’s promotional campaign, says the complaint. Two days after the massage, the senior citizen got a call from one of the masseurs, who demanded Rs 25 crore in exchange for not uploading the video in which the victim was seen in a state of undress and seemingly a compromising position.
When the complainant resisted, they sent him the video on WhatsApp, indicating that they were in serious business of extortion. After mulling over the threats, he approached Amboli police late on Thursday night and registered a complaint against the five for extortion.
On Friday morning, the Amboli police formed a team and arrested the accused from their residence in Goregaon and Malad. The police said all the accused YouTubers are suspected of having used the same modus operandi earlier, too. Immediately after the arrests, the police ensured that the YouTube channel was shut down.
Bharat Gaikwad, senior police inspector of Amboli police station, said, “The accused persons are suspected to have conned many others using a similar modus operandi. We are yet to identify the other victims and once we get the details more arrests are expected in this case.”
The police are also checking if the YouTubers had indulged in filming pornographic content and blackmailing their victims. The arrested accused have been identified as Hussain Hanif Makhani (36), Rehman Shaikh (45), Yuvraj Singh (29), Lucky Mishra (32) and Narendra Chauhan (30). The police have booked them under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
