A 59-year-old resident of Golf Green was allegedly blackmailed and forced into paying Rs 67 lakh to fraudsters who threatened to upload his intimate photographs and videos on social media, police said.
The complainant, a senior executive of a private company, reported the matter to police in October last year when the blackmailing calls did not stop even after he had paid the money demanded of him, said an officer of the cyber crime cell of Kolkata police.
“According to the complaint, the fraudsters had fraudulently captured the complainant’s photographs and videos and started to blackmail him with them.”
The man, the police said, was told that his videos and photographs would be used to create his fake social media profile to malign him unless he paid up.
The police said they found during the investigation that the Rs 67 lakh which the complainant had transferred over a period of few days was subsequently transferred through 13 bank accounts, two of which were traced to a bank in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.
“Most of the accounts through which the money was transferred were mule accounts, meaning they had been opened with fake identity papers. It is difficult to trace the real owners of such accounts. Fraudsters withdraw money using ATMs from anywhere in the country,” said an investigator.
But the two Bareilly accounts were used by the genuine owner, the investigator said.
Based on the findings of the investigation, a team of officers from the cyber crime police station of Kolkata police conducted a raid in Bareilly on April 24 and arrested Amit Kumar, 36, for his alleged involvement in the case.
“He has direct complicity in the case. There are other members in the gang who are yet to be arrested,” said the officer. The police said they have found “relevant documents” that prove Kumar’s ownership of the bank accounts, where a part of the swindled money was transferred.
A senior police officer said this was a classic case of “sextortion” where a person was lured into an intimate situation and then blackmailed with photographs and videos.
“In such cases, fraudsters start threatening the victim through calls and often impersonate police officers demanding money. In this case, the victim received phone calls from three numbers. However, when the calls did not stop even after he had transferred the money, he had no option but to approach the police,” said the senior officer.
Kumar, who was arrested on Friday in Bareilly, was brought to Kolkata on transit remand and produced in court on Sunday and sent to police custody till May 12.