Cyber sextortion: Mumbai software programmer duped of Rs 21 lakh by ‘Facebook friend’

The police said the complainant, a Mahim resident, received a friend request from an unknown woman named Poonam Sharma, who claimed to be a school teacher in Delhi, while browsing through Facebook on June 16. He accepted the request and chatted with the woman for some time.

After a few hours, when the complainant was in the washroom, he received a video call from Sharma. When he answered, he saw a woman taking off her clothes. He immediately hung up the call. However, a day later, the complainant received a WhatsApp message from Sharma containing a recorded clip of their video call conversation. She threatened to upload the video online, as stated in the FIR.

The day after, he got a call from a man who claimed to be IPS officer Dinesh Kumar from the Delhi cyber crime branch, said the police. The man told the complainant that a video call clip of him had gone viral on the internet. The officer allegedly demanded Rs 21,500 to delete the video from the internet, and the complainant sent the money.

On July 3, the “IPS officer” called the complainant again and told him that Sharma had died by suicide. He claimed that Sharma had mentioned the complainant’s name and mobile number in her suicide note. In the guise of helping the complainant resolve the case by bribing the doctor, the police, and Sharma’s family, the “IPS officer” extorted more money from him, as stated in the complaint.

When the “IPS officer” demanded more money, the complainant realised that he was being conned. However, an officer said that by then, he had already sent Rs 21.39 lakh to the fraudsters.

On Saturday, he approached the police and filed a complaint. The police investigated the matter and obtained details of the bank accounts, mobile numbers, and internet devices from the service providers that the fraudsters used to commit the crime.