A 33-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly creating a fake profile on Instagram in the name of a woman and luring men to extort money from them, the Delhi Police said today.
The accused, identified as Gurgaon resident Akash Choudhary, also used to contact genuine companies and brands for promotion of their product on his fake profile by showing a large number of followers, they said.
One of his fake accounts on the photo and video-sharing site has one million followers, the police said, adding Choudhary was arrested yesterday.
The matter came to light recently when a woman complained to the police that someone had created several Instagram accounts on her name and was using her photographs downloaded illegally from her original account.
She alleged that her fake Instagram IDs were being used for promoting other brands by posting their advertisements on such fake accounts to earn money and that her photographs were also being used for promoting escort and prostitution sites to defame her, the police said.
During investigation, she informed that she had come across a person on her Facebook who claimed that he had been duped by the creator of her fake Instagram account by demanding money from him in lieu of chatting.
In 2017, when she came to know about her fake profile she had contacted the accused online to delete the profile and remove her pictures.
But the accused instead asked her to give more pictures and threatened to post her pictures on prostitution sites if she did not comply. Initially, the complainant gave him a few pictures but later approached the police, said Chinmoy Biswal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Southeast Delhi.
Acting on the complaint, the police had put the accounts on surveillance which led them to Choudhary, who runs a fresh farm meat shop in Sushant Lok shopping arcade, Gurgaon as a front for his other activities.
Choudhary was arrested yesterday, DCP Biswal said.
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