Bengaluru:

Faith in her boyfriend and his promise of marrying her has led to a 20-year-old from Bengaluru losing Rs 2.5 crore of her family’s money. The boyfriend used videos of him getting intimate with her to blackmail her into also giving him jewellery, expensive watches and even a high-end car. 

The blackmail continued for months until the victim could not take it anymore and approached the police recently, leading to the boyfriend’s arrest. 

Police officials said the woman, who is now 20, met her boyfriend Mohan Kumar when they were both in boarding school. They became good friends, but lost touch. They met again years later and fell in love. 

Kumar promised the woman that he would marry her and the couple went on trips together. During such trips, Kumar made videos of them getting intimate, assuring her that he was only doing it for himself. 

In some of the videos, Kumar ensured that his face was not visible and then began using them to blackmail the woman. He threatened he would upload the videos unless he was given large sums of money.  

Shaken, the woman secretly withdrew Rs 1.25 crore from her grandmother’s account and transferred it to some accounts given by Kumar. As the blackmail continued, she also gave him a total of Rs 1.32 crore in cash on different occasions. 

Kumar’s demands did not stop, however, and he made the woman give him expensive watches, jewellery and a luxury car. He even got money transferred to his father’s account several times.

“When Kumar continued to make demands, the victim gathered the courage to approach the police and file a complaint. Mohan Kumar has been arrested,” said an official.

Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayanand said, “This was a well-planned crime. The accused extorted Rs 2.57 crore, of which Rs 80 lakh has been recovered.”

In the past week, an alarming extortion scam has targeted 59 Hong Kong residents, including four women, resulting in losses exceeding HK$1.9 million (US$244,430), South China Morning Post reported. According to the police, who revealed the figures on their CyberDefender Facebook page, the scam typically involves extortionists – often women – luring male victims into undressing during video chats and then secretly recording the acts.

The scammers then use the footage to coerce victims into payment by threatening to share the videos online or with their relatives and friends. In some cases, scammers also pose as charming, high-income, educated men to target women on social media. They use flattery and sweet talk to gain trust, manipulating victims by learning about their personal interests and lives.

”They use sweet talk to learn about the victims’ personal lives and interests to manipulate them. In the past week, police received 59 cases of naked-chat blackmail, with scammers extorting more than HK$1.9 million. Four cases involved female victims,” the force said.

In the first half of this year, students comprised 20% of the 1,102 victims, with fraudsters pocketing over HK$31 million. Comparing year-over-year data, reports of “naked-chat blackmail” surged 50% from 1,402 in 2022 to 2,117 in 2023, while losses doubled from HK$22 million to HK$44 million.

Moreover, deception cases in Hong Kong have increased by 12% from 21,798 to 24,407 between January and July this year. Losses skyrocketed 50% to HK$5.14 billion during the same period. Law enforcement responded by arresting over 6,000 suspects linked to scams and related activities this year.

The police are now cautioning citizens to exercise vigilance when meeting people online. They emphasise the importance of verifying identities and profiles, avoiding intimate activities on video chats, and reporting suspicious activities immediately.

Recently, a few Hong Kong men fell prey to a romance scam that used deepfake artificial intelligence to lure its victims into parting with more than $46 million. As per CNN, the suspects aged 21 to 34, were mostly well-educated, with many of them digital media and technology graduates allegedly recruited by the gang after attending local universities. The suspects allegedly worked with IT specialists overseas to build a fake cryptocurrency platform, where the victims were coerced to make investments, police said.