Three people have been arrested for running a 'sextortion' racket that had been targeting personalities including politicians and bureaucrats, India's Mumbai police officials said on Tuesday.
According to the police, the accused were arrested from Rajasthan, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh on Monday.
Speaking to Sputnik, a senior official revealed that the gang created fake accounts on different social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram pretending to be girls to target high profile people.
"They (accused) befriended the victims on social media platforms and later asked them to connect via video calls. The accused streamed porn on the video calls and recorded the actions of the victims," he said.
They further morphed the faces in the objectionable videos and blackmailed the victims for money, police said.
"We have seized 58 bank accounts that were used in the racket to transfer ransom money. So far we have found 171 fake Facebook accounts, and five telegram channels of the accused," the officer said.
Initially, the accused used to demand a sum of INR 2,000-5,000 ($27- $69) and later, they started demanding thousands more rupees.
Police have also managed to extract the names of all the high profile people who fell victims to the sextortion racket and ended up paying a hefty amount of money.
