Man Held For Masterminding Cyber Sextortion (Image: Unsplash.com)

The Delhi Police have arrested a 36 year-old-man, who has been masterminding sextortion of several men across the country, posing as a police man. Calling up the victims, his demand was to ‘pay the money, or he would release the person’s private/sex video,’ reported NDTV. The perpetrator, Mahendra Singh, was caught by the Delhi Police from Mewat, in Haryana.

The sextortion mastermind, Mahendra Singh, have been blackmailing men and running this scam for a couple of years. The net was cast when a complaint was lodged, when a man from Delhi launched a complaint on being blackmailed. The story began when, a woman called the complainant, agreeing to have an intimate video call with him.

Soon after, Mahendra Singh followed up with a call, posing himself as ACP Ram Pandey, a police officer, demanding money for deleting the video. The promise of deleting the video, in which the complainant was seen bare, came with a demand for Rs. Nine lakhs. The complainant paid up, and despite that, another call followed, with a fresh demand of another 15 lakhs more to hush the case. Singh raised the threat of sending the man and his family to jail, if payment was not done.

The Complainant, feeling scared and threatened did not reveal the matter to anyone initially. Later, as he disclosed to his friend, the friend encouraged him to register a complaint with the police. On being alerted, the Delhi Police immediately began searching for Singh until he was traced and arrested at Mewat. On arresting, the police confiscated a swiping machine, BharatPe, a pen drive, a memory card of 16 GB, and an iPhone from Singh’s possession.

On further investigation, it was known that there were other victims also, who had undergone similar blackmailing from Singh. The perpetrator, Singh, confessed to having called his victims, posing himself as ACP Ram Pandey or a You-Tuber, to threaten and demand money in return for deleting their private videos instead of making them public.