Three Tamil Nadu men extort Rs 30 lakh in name of Delhi police, arrested

CHENNAI: Three Tamil Nadu residents who posed as Delhi police personnel and extorted more than 30 lakh from nearly 1,000 people in the national capital, as fines for not being booked for watching porn, have been arrested.
A cybercrime wing team from that city picked up Ramkumar, 32, of Mangadu, Joseph, 37, of Kolathur and Dinochand, 29, of Trichy after tracking their internet protocol (IP) addresses to Triplicane. "The Delhi police now plan to get a transit warrant before taking them to that city for further investigation," said a Chennai police officer.
The gang members had used a logo of the Delhi police and started a Google Pay account through which they extracted money from the victims. The issue came to light after many complainants went to police when they did not get the receipts for their payments as promised and the mobile phone numbers of the 'officers' were turned off after the payments were made.
A case was registered and a cybercrime wing squad from Delhi arrived in Chennai and approached the Triplicane police with a request to help apprehend the suspects whose IP addresses had been discovered.
After they were picked up, the three were brought to the Triplicane police station and questioned. An officers said the three men also extorted money from people in several parts of Tamil Nadu but that police were yet to get complaints in this reagard.
Explaining the gang's modus operandi in Delhi, the officer said the three men would get a victim's IP address, contact him and then threaten him. "He would be told that unless he paid 3,000 a case would be slapped on him for watching porn. They would also tell him that he would be produced before a magistrate in Delhi," said a police officer.
Investigators, however, are not sure if the gang targeted its people randomly or if it used any software to hack into the VPNs (virtual private networks) that are mostly used while watching porn.