The Asian Age

Choudhury sent text messages to men posing as woman to extort money

- AGE CORRESPOND­ENT

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, 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 that in 2017, when said the cyber said 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 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. and

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.

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