11 July,2022 08:00 AM IST | Mumbai | Sachin Gaad
Representational images. Pic/iStock
A 23-year-old MBA student from Bhandup recently became a victim of sextortion and lost Rs 4.68 lakh to fraudsters who posed as YouTube officials. The Bhandup police have registered an offence, but no arrest has been made yet. The incident started on June 30 when the second-year student shared his mobile number with a woman on a dating app. Around 8 pm, he received a video call from the woman's number on WhatsApp wherein a semi clad woman was seen making vulgar gestures. It took the complainant 4-5 minutes to realise something was amiss and he disconnected the call.
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Later that night, he got a message on WhatsApp with the recording of the video call, stating that he should pay the woman money, failing which the video would be uploaded on social media sites. The scared student then blocked the number.
However, the next day he got a voice message on WhatsApp where the sender introduced himself as Sanjay Singh and claimed he worked with YouTube. He said the video was being posted on their platform and he needed to pay a settlement of Rs 5,550 including Rs 550 as charge to delete the video while the remaining was refundable. Seeing that the student paid the amount, the accused continued to demand money under different pretexts and got him to pay Rs 4,68,201.
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Meanwhile, the MBA student got a call from one Ram Pandey, who claimed to be a part of YouTube's legal team and demanded that the victim send him all the details of the case as a PDF and that a charge of Rs 1.7 lakh was required for the same. Pandey added that if the victim failed to pay the amount by Friday (July 8), they would lodge a police complaint against him.
As the student could not arrange the money, he narrated the ordeal to his father who realised his son was being duped and approached the police.
"We are tracing the accused. We have also asked banks to freeze the accounts used in the crime," said Nitin Unhavane, senior inspector, Bhandup.
