Delhi: This gang sent fake notices for watching porn to dupe many

NEW DELHI: Three men have been arrested for running an online extortion racket routed through Cambodia. They used adware and browser pop-ups to display fake police notices directing the targets to pay a fine of Rs 3,000 for watching pornography online.
The accused have been identified as Gabrial James and Ram Kumar from Chennai and B Dhinushanth from Trichy, who was the mastermind.
While monitoring grievance on social media, police found a few people reporting about a notice wherein they were told by the “cops” that since they were watching pornography online, all files in their computer had been blocked. They would have to pay a fine of Rs 3,000 for indulging in such “illegal” activities.
DCP (Cyber Cell) Anyesh Roy said the victims reported that these messages came even though they were only doing routine searches on their web browser and not watching any pornographic content.
“Since this was a case of cheating in the name of law enforcement agencies, an FIR was lodged suo motu based on the social media inputs. Technical analysis of the pop-up notices showed that they were being routed through foreign locations. However, the money trail led to multiple accounts being operating from Tamil Nadu. Our teams camped at Chennai, Trichy, Coimbatore, Udhagamandalam and several other places. They finally zeroed in on the three suspects and arrested them,” added Roy.
During interrogation, Dhinushanth revealed that the technical part of the operation — hosting of bogus police notice and its targeted display to internet users — was being handled by his brother, B Chanderkant, from Veal Pon near Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
“So far, we have found more than 20 bank accounts that were used to route the defrauded money. Cheating of over Rs 30 lakh was done through UPI IDs and QR codes from February to June. Dhinushanth said the money was moved out of the banking system through cryptocurrencies by his brother,” said the DCP.