Bengaluru: Man held for posing as girl on dating sites, blackmailing men

Bengaluru: The cyber crime police arrested a 32-year-old man, who had created fake accounts on dating sites as a woman and blackmailed people to expose their private photographs and videos.

The police said that one of the victims had paid Rs 2 lakh after being blackmailed with the private conversation. Based on his complaint, the police arrested the accused, Prakhyath Vinay, a resident of Sira town in Tumakuru, on Wednesday.

Vinay owned a chicken stall a year ago and suffered big losses because of addiction to gambling. He sold his shop, but he still had big debts to pay.

To earn more money, he decided to cheat people on dating websites and created fake accounts with the profile photographs of random girls by stealing them online. He used to send friend requests to many by posing himself as a girl and after befriending them, he would share the contact number and chat with them. He used a voice-changer app on his mobile phone to make phone calls to the victims.

He recorded their private conversations, photographs and videos. He used to blackmail his victims, saying he would share photographs and videos with the victim’s family members and friends. Many had paid the ransom through online.

Based on call record details, the cyber crime police tracked the accused and arrested him on Wednesday from Tumakuru. The police booked him for cheating, blackmailing and also under other sections of IT Act and got him remanded to judicial custody.