On July 26, Delhi police arrested three people of a gang for extorting money from people by claiming they had been caught watching porn online and that it was illegal.
In the last six months, the gang had extorted over R 30 lakh from thousands of individuals across the country.
How they did it?
The accused allegedly sent false police notices to their targets, threatening them with legal action unless they paid a fine of Rs 3,000.
The bogus notices would indicate their computer would be "blocked" because they were found browsing pornographic video that was sexually violent or included paedophilia, according to police.
Then they would demand Rs 3,000 in order to avoid legal action and as a result, the victims would immediately pay up.
Investigation
The arrested people are identified as Gabrial James and Ram Kumar, both from Chennai, and B.Dhinushanth from Trichy. They were arrested after the police travelled more than 2,000 km in Tamil Nadu for a week.
According to police, the mastermind of the gang operated from Veal Pon, Cambodia’s capital city and was targetting Indians on the pretext of freezing their computer for watching illegal online porn.
Also Read: Delhi Police arrested Gang sending fake notices for watching PORN, threatened to pay fine
Cyber cell DCP Anyesh Roy said that “there were reports about fake ads and pop-ups warnings notifying internet users that they were caught watching pornography and it was illegal.” Following the complaints, the FIR was registered and an investigation began.
The notices were routed from foreign locations. Police investigated the victims' bank accounts and transactions, as well as the money trail.
“We discovered that the money was received by the accused through accounts set up in Tamil Nadu. Our crew travelled there but encountered numerous difficulties due to the accused's use of fictitious addresses. They did, however, stay for a week and raided locations in several cities and villages,” revealed DCP Roy.
B. Dhinushanth was the local mastermind of the extortion ring. His brother B. Chanderkant used to handle the technical part of the operation such as hosting bogus police notices and its targeted display to internet users.
Chanderkant was operating from Veal Pon and is yet to be arrested.
So far, police have seized 20 bank accounts, alleging that they were used to receive money and create a trail to hide transactions. More accounts are suspected to be used in the scam.