New Delhi: A 33-year-old commerce graduate disguised as a woman landed in police custody for creating fake profiles of women, upload pictures and alluring men into friendship so as to extort money.
The accused used fake profiles on social networking sites to promote luxury apparel and charged money from the companies with help of e-wallet accounts.
Akash Chaudhary, a tech-savvy conman, has one million followers in one fake Instagram account. He invited advertisements as promotionals of various brands.
One such fake account has more than one million followers and it was used to post advertisements of other brands for their promotion, said the cyber police.
It all began when a woman filed a complaint alleging that someone had created her fake Instagram accounts and illegally downloaded her photographs from her original account.
She said that her fake Instagram profile was used to promote branded clothes to earn money and her photographs were also upoloaded on escort and prostitution sites in order to defame her.
During investigation, the woman told the police she had come across a person on Facebook who claimed that the person, who had created her fake Instagram account, had also duped him by demanding money from him for Instagram chatting.
The complainant said that in 2017, when she came to know about her fake profile, she contacted the accused online to urged him to delete the fake profile and remove her photographs.
But instead of deleting the fake account and the photographs, the accused threatened the compolainant to give more photographs otherwise he’ll post them (the photographs he had with him) on escort services and prostitution sites.
Initially, the complainant gave a few photographs and went straight to the police to file a complaint in January 2018.
The police said that after detailed technical surveillance, the police team zeroed down on one Choudhary, a resident of Gurgaon, who was the owner of a meat shop, which was front to his actual business.
When asked about his role in this crime, he initially denied being involved in the crime. After his mobile phones, laptop and bank accounts were scrutinised, he confessed to his crime.
During sustained interrogation, he disclosed that he was aware about revenue generation from online-advertising on social networking sites.
In 2016, to earn quick buck, he planned to create fake profiles of young and beautiful women on social networking sites and increase his friends list by sending and accepting requests.
The accused confessed that he had downloaded mobile wallets and with the help of his other SIM number and fake e-mail IDs, he used to link these mobile wallets with genuine bank accounts in Gurgaon.
He used to send attractive texts to men on Instagram posing as a woman on the pretext of friendship and after meeting them asked for money, which was transferred in his e-wallet account.
From these e-wallets, he used to transfer the money to his bank account. So far, he has duped 10 to 12 men in this fashion.
