20-year-old who created lakhs of fake 'followers' arrested

The racket created and sold fake profiles on social media platforms

Mumbai Police's Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested a 20-year-old man for allegedly working for an international Social Media Marketing (SMM) racket involved in the creation of fake profiles on social media. The accused was identified as Abhishek Daude, a resident of suburban Kurla. The racket created and sold fake profiles on social media platforms. These profiles were used to artificially inflate the number of followers on social media in order to project a person as 'influencer', said a police official.

Influencers are in high demand as they can boost a company's or a brand''s sales by endorsing a product. Bollywood playback singer Bhoomi Trivedi had approached Mumbai Police recently and complained that somebody had created her fake profile on Instagram. The Crime Branch, which had formed a special investigation team to probe the racket, arrested Daude from his residence in Gauri Shankar Nagar in Kurla on Tuesday, the official said.

Daude had allegedly created over 5 lakh 'fake followers'' for total of 176 profiles on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook in order to fraudulently project them as influencers. These fake followers are created either manually or with the help of softwares, commonly called 'bots'.

Daude was produced before a court which remanded him in police custody till July 17, the official added.

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