NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police has arrested two members of a gang who would lure their targets with video calls after befriending them on social media and blackmail them with recordings of their private webcam chats, officials said on Wednesday. The accused have been identified as Samaydeen (28) and Munfed (26), both residents of Rajasthan, they said.
The Delhi Police's Crime Branch had arrested four members of this online sextortion gang in July last year. The accused had disclosed that the main leaders of the gang were Samaydeen and Munfed. The gang had cheated and extorted money from more than 200 victims, a senior police officer said.
A team led by inspector Anil Sharma of IGIS, Crime Branch laid a trap and arrested both the accused on Tuesday, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Dheeraj Kumar said.
The accused prepared fake ID with profile names and photographs of attractive women on various social media platforms and sent friend request to victims. After becoming friends, they shared their WhatsApp numbers and started sexting, police said.
After trapping them through sexting, the accused offered to place video calls to the targets and show them a girl stripping off. They would lure the targets into getting nude during the webcam chat sessions, they said.
As they removed their clothes, the accused would record them secretly using a screen-recording application. During the episode, no voice calls were made and the victim believed that he was interacting with a girl. The accused would later force them into paying blackmail money, police said.
The victims of this gang are across the country, they said.
Samaydeen is Munfed's brother-in-law and they started the sextortion gang around two years ago, police said.
