Techie falls prey to sweet-talking sextortionist, loses over Rs 1 lakh

Bengaluru: Responding to a stranger's messages turned ugly for a 23-year-old software engineer who ended up falling prey to sextortion and losing over Rs 1 lakh.As the fraudster kept demanding more money, Zitin (name changed), a resident of DRDO Township in CV Raman Nagar, knocked on the doors of Byappanahalli police seeking action. He told police he paid money to the fraudster between 6pm on Sept 18 and 10am on Sept 19.When Zitin was spending time on Facebook on his mobile phone, he received a ‘hi' message from a stranger bearing the profile named Rishika Sharma. He responded and the duo exchanged a few messages. Sharma asked for his mobile number and he readily shared it.They started texting on WhatsApp. Soon, Sharma started showing interest in knowing more about Zitin. The duo agreed to speak on a video call. Accordingly, Sharma made a video call. Zitin claimed that he didn't know she was recording the call.Zitin claimed that sometime after they ended the call, Sharma sent a morphed obscene video of his. According to him, Sharma had morphed his face on another person. She threatened him that she would send the video to his Facebook friends if he didn't pay her money.Sharma asked him for Rs 12,500, which he transferred. She demanded more money and every time Zitin obliged, she demanded more and declined to delete the video. In all, he paid nearly Rs 1.1 lakh from his two bank accounts.As she continued to demand more money, Zitin realised that he was in trouble and called the cyber helpline 1930. The helpline staff suggested he not transfer any more money and advised him to lodge a complaint.A senior police officer said, Zitin responded to the caller even though the number was shown as spam and got carried away with by the caller's sweet talks."We have written to bank officials to freeze the money in the fraudster's account. A case has been registered under the Information Technology Act section 66 (c) – (punishment for identity theft) and 66 (D) – (punishment for cheating by personation by using a computer resource). We suggest people not to entertain such messages or calls," the officer added.