fraud
Mumbai: A 63-year-old retired man from Kanjurmarg has alleged that he was cheated of Rs 15.29 lakhs by people who threatened to circulate an intimate video and implicated him in a purported suicide case. The East Cyber police registered a first information report against unknown persons who impersonated cops from Delhi and Jaipur to extort money after claiming that the said woman using the name Kajal Sharma sent him a Facebook friend request on Aug 10. The woman then demanded Rs 10,000, threatening to send the recording to his Facebook contacts and upload it on social media when the senior citizen blocked her WhatsApp number and Facebook account. “On Oct 6, a caller identifying himself as Delhi police inspector Sandeep Kumar allegedly told Rumade that his videos were being uploaded to YouTube and directed him to contact a purported YouTube employee, Rahul Sharma. Sharma allegedly demanded Rs 2.63 lakhs to block the videos on YouTube and other platforms,” said the cyber police. On Oct 13, another caller, Vikram Rathod, allegedly posed as an inspector from Jaipur Police Station and claimed a woman named Kajal Verma had died by suicide and Rumade’s videos had been found on her phone. The Mumbai police statistics showed 208 cases of sextortion were registered from across the city from 2022 to 2025. Meanwhile, a total of 412 sextortion cases was registered in Maharashtra during the period and people collectively lost Rs 22.2 crores and the recovery was just Rs 0.44 crore.
She later contacted him on WhatsApp, made a video call and persuaded him to share an intimate video, which she allegedly recorded.
Rathod later allegedly demanded Rs 12 lakh for settling the case, changing the post-mortem report, managing the woman’s family and hiring a lawyer. Following instructions from Rathod and Sharma, Rumade transferred Rs 15.29 lakhs from four bank accounts, including accounts held jointly with or belonging to his wife, to accounts provided by them.