Sting: Social media serves as a fertile ground for sleaze blackmail
By Venkatesh Raghavan
Mumbai: The scare generated by honey traps staging expose acts is increasing by the day, as several social media platforms are accommodative of interactions between strangers with little help to go about doing background checks. Complaints kept pouring in on this front. The first one to raise the flag was a woman journalist who used to work with me in my print media days. Later, my former project head too raised a flag on how his wife went through a forced resignation owing to blackmail that sought sexual favours from her.
I decided to operate discretely and detect what kind of modus operandi such predators adopt to trap their unsuspecting victims. I checked my friend requests on Facebook. Many friend requests were there, some with no common friends and others with multiple common friends. I then decided to check on the Messenger feature of Facebook that permitted private conversations. A lady (later discovered to be a male posing as a woman) under the name Anjali Sharma (7742652762; the number has been submitted in the police complaint I lodged with the Matunga Cyber cell too) repeatedly sent me a hello message. I responded with a curt question. “What do you expect from our conversation?” She indicated that she wanted to be friends with me.
I queried her, “Are you a software engineer? Your photo looks as if you are a rather young person.” She said, “I am a beautician working in a parlour in the Karol Bagh area of Delhi.” She then said she would like to chat with me on WhatsApp. It immediately set my amber lights blinking. Why at all should a young woman working in the national capital seek to get acquainted with a person of post-retirement age in Mumbai? What’s at stake? The answers were soon to come as I repeatedly kept stalling her requests to make a video call to me. She kept on asking, “Mai kaisi lag rahi hoon?” She also questioned me about how my family was doing. Immediately I could sense that the woman had ulterior motives in carrying our conversation further. I responded to her kaisi lag rahi hoon in English. “You are a beautiful friend to have. I love you.”
The following afternoon, there were two video calls made to my mobile number. I ignored both. In the evening again the mobile rang from the same number. I texted her that I will first finish feeding my dad before taking the video call from her. Finally, I granted her the wish of receiving her call. She had put it on mute meaning no sounds will be reproduced at her end. She then showed the act of undressing herself in front of a video camera. Later, after more investigation, I learnt that there are many scammers in social media who use the same video for purpose of morphing and blackmailing unsuspecting victims by posting it on either social media platforms or YouTube. There were several gangs of blackmail sleaze operators that use such videos as a common tool.
Coming back to the situation, after observing that she was all out to depict her private organs, I made facial expressions that indicated that I was impressed by her “expose act.” She then began to nag me continuously to show my private parts. I understood immediately that a blackmail message is bound to follow. Instead of undressing, I just put my mobile video close to my thigh and then switched it off. As anticipated the message came asking me to shell out INR 10,000. “If you don’t give me the sum, I will post the video on all social media networks besides the YouTube channel.”
I responded by telling her that I have already published a book based on my private sex life and it was already in the public domain. I ended with, “You can go enjoy yourself.” The next day morning, I got a call from an unknown number who threatened to arrest me and my dad for what had been posted on some YouTube link. Unfortunately, the person talking did not comprehend that a journalist of my seniority and exposure to the life of criminals (I have been a crime reporter for more than decades covering both Mumbai gangland and Mumbai sleaze joints) is more than adept at handling such threatening calls.
I immediately shot off in a summarized fashion what I had gone through in the sting operation I had performed to bring out their modus operandi to Matunga Cyber Pagar (the cyber cell’s mobile response number that included WhatsApp presence under the aegis of Matunga police station). In addition, I visited the police station and narrated the entire scheme of things that transpired before my final act of lodging a formal complaint.
The police were very helpful and helped me record the statement in full. I also furnished them with transcripts of my conversation on Messenger as well as that which took place on WhatsApp. I left late evening after photocopying a copy of the formal complaint I had made to serve as proof if any need be. It was then that I learnt that many people were forced into parting with money owing to acts of forced indiscretion as was the case I handled in my sting operation. Another friend of mine, my senior in engineering college, told me that an office colleague of his got into trouble and was facing harassment for nearly three weeks because of the conversation his friend had when the latter was drunk.
On a parting note, the duty officer also uttered a word of caution that in most such cases, it’s a man operating as a woman.
