Mumbai cyber safe: 80-year-old falls prey to sextortionists, duped ₹8 lakh

Mumbai: An 80-year-old man from Matunga was duped of Rs8 lakh by a fraudster who threatened him of sharing his semi-nude video on social media sites.

According to the information received from the Matunga Police Station, Vasant Savla, a real estate broker, received a call on March 11 from a girl named Mansi Jain who introduced herself as a doctor. Jain told Savla that she got his number from Facebook. She lives in Mumbai and has a dispensary in Parel which she wants to sell. Later Savla received a call which got disconnected within seconds. The next day, Salva was threatened to pay 1.50 lakh as Jain claimed she has a naked video of the elderly man.

On March 20, another person posing as a CID official called Salva and forced him to pay Rs32000 and Rs65000 to another fraudster who posed as a YouTube official. Two days later, another member of the gang called Salva impersonating a police official. The victim was forced to pay Rs6,00000 to get his case closed. Later he informed his family about the incident and a case was Matunga police station under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. Further investigation is going on.

Mumbai police cautions citizens

According to Cyber Crime Cell under Crime Branch of Mumbai police , the most common form of online frauds are related to banks, online commerce platforms where fraudsters, posing as bank /platform officials, convince the victim to share OTP, KYC updates and sometimes send the links to be clicked to access bank accounts.“People should know that no bank or institution is authorised to demand for bank details or PIN numbers. Unfortunately, educated people are falling prey to online frauds and losing lakhs of rupees,” explained DCP Cyber Crime, Balsingh Rajput.