Mumbai: Man loses Rs 7.5 lakh to sextortion by 'Delhi cop' after chat with woman

MUMBAI: A 43-year-old Chinchpokli resident ended up paying over Rs 7.5 lakh which he had saved from his earnings after he received a call from a person who claimed to be a police officer with the Delhi cyber crime branch and threatened to fix him in an abetment to suicide case.
The money was extorted by the fake police officer, who identified himself as Arun Saxena and sent a picture of what looked like the body of a woman with whom the victim had recently video-chatted. The woman had undressed before the camera during the chat. The impersonator claimed the woman had ended her life after pornographic videos of her with the man had gone viral on social media.
"The cyber team is tracking the IP address and the phone number that the fraudster used to extort money," said an officer from the Nirmal Nagar police station.
The complainant, employed with a private firm, lost the money between July 15 and 18. The problem began when he was at a friend's house in Santacruz (east) on July 14. "Around 10 pm, I accepted the friend request that I received on Facebook from a woman named Ankita Sharma. Immediately, she chatted on FB Messenger, and later she came on a video call and started removing her clothes. I disconnected the chat. I shared my mobile number when the woman again pinged. This time she did the same on WhatsApp video call and asked me to show my face in front of the camera. Suspecting something amiss, I disconnected the call and blocked the woman's number and her FB page," he said in the complaint.
The day after the chat, the complainant received a video clip that was recorded by Sharma and the sender identified himself as Saxena. "The fake cop scared the complainant and shared a number. He asked him to delete the objectionable videos from social media sites. If not, the impersonator claimed that he would be forced to register an FIR against him. The victim paid an overall amount of Rs 2.53 lakh to delete the videos," said the police officer.
Later, the fake police officer demanded Rs 5 lakh to pay to the woman's family. "The complainant arranged the money that he had in his savings and transferred it on three occasions so that he would not be booked for abetment. However, the fraudster demanded more money. It is then that the complainant realised he had been duped," said the police officer.