Sextortion racket: Stash of sleaze videos found in phones, say Chandigarh cops

Chandigarh, August 22

Hundreds of objectionable videos recorded for extortion by members of the sextortion gang have been recovered from mobile phones recovered following their arrest by the Operations Cell of the UT police.

The police have so far arrested nine persons and recovered 13 mobile phones from their possession.

CFSL to dig into laptops

• Three laptops recovered from the accused will be sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory to recover data
• The accused used to store videos in mobile phones and send these repeatedly to victims to extort money over and over again, said a police official
• They would make WhatsApp calls to victims posing as police officials to threaten and pressure victims to pay up

The police said they had found a large number of objectionable videos of victims duped by the accused in their mobile phones.

“The accused used to store these videos in their mobile phones and send these repeatedly to victims to extort money over and over again,” said a police official.

Photographs of some police officials used as WhatsApp display pictures were also recovered from the phones.

The gang members used to make WhatsApp calls to victims posing as police officials to threaten and pressure victims to pay up, said the police.

Repeated demands for money had forced several victims to change their mobile numbers to evade the gang members. The gang’s daily earnings ran into lakhs of rupees, said the police.

Meanwhile, three laptops recovered from the accused will be sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Sector 36, to recover data.