Kolkata: The city cops are sending a team to Delhi to question members of a cyber sextortion gang that threatens to circulate videos of doctors with women in a compromising position on the other end of a video call and extorts huge amounts from the victims, police said. In the past six months, at least four similar cases targeting doctors and highly-skilled professionals in the city have been reported.
Two suspects, identified as Mahfuz (39) and Aamir Khan (26), were arrested by Delhi Police from Mewat in Rajasthan last Wednesday for allegedly running this racket.Delhi Police has claimed that the gang has been found involved in 25 cases of sextortion across the country so far. The numbers can increase, they have indicated and asked for inputs from police forces around the country.
Kolkata Police is hopeful of gaining valuable leads in similar cases reported from the city due to the recent arrests made by the Delhi cops.
Cops have found that the extorted money — whether in Delhi or Kolkata — was transferred to various bank accounts in Haryana, Punjab and Maharashtra. All these accounts were opened digitally, solely for the purpose of receiving fraudulently obtained money. They lacked proper Know Your Customer (KYC) verification documentation. Further investigation in these cases is underway. Analysis of monetary transactions led the cops to identify the arrested persons, cops said.
The accused, sources claim, were using two separate methods to target affluent senior citizens.
In some cases, the photos of the victims were superimposed and the fraudsters took screenshots of their conversation with the victims over WhatsApp, cops said. In other cases, the victims are exposed to nudity over video calls and then blackmailed by the callers posing as cops or central probe agency sleuths, police said.
According to the data shared by the cyber cell of Kolkata Police, about 10% of all cybercrimes reported in the city last year are related to sextortion.