A post-graduate from the London School of Economics and two others have been arrested in a cyber extortion case in Delhi. The three men allegedly tried to extort money from a businessman through a WhatsApp call from Thailand.
They demanded that he transfer the money through cryptocurrency and threatened to kill his children if he refused.
The accused were identified as Sumit, 42, Prince, 35, and Nitish, 31, all residents of Delhi. Nitish has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics (LSE), while Sumit is a BCom graduate. Prince had studied till the ninth standard.
The police’s cyber investigation team had started tracking the accused after the businessman lodged a complaint at the DBG Road police station. In his complaint, he alleged that he had received an international call on WhatsApp, and that the caller introduced himself as a notorious gangster.
The caller, he alleged, sent a crypto QR code and asked him to deposit the money. If he didn’t listen to him, the caller threatened to shoot his children dead, he said.
The police immediately lodged an extortion case and began their investigation along with the cyber police. The technical team investigated the WhatsApp call and QR codes with advanced cyber tools, and the source of the transaction was traced to Thailand.
The crypto money trail was also tracked. Meanwhile, a second team kept an eye on the accused’s hideouts in Delhi. As soon as they returned to India from Thailand, they were arrested by the police.
During interrogation, the accused revealed that they were in heavy debt and came up with the extortion plan as an easy way to pay off their loans. Sumit, who knew the victim, chose the target and used the name of a gangster to scare him.
To avoid getting caught, the three accused went to Thailand. They bought international SIM cards from there and made the WhatsApp calls for extortion. The mobile phone used to create the QR code, as well as the phone from which the call was made, have been recovered.
“This case shows that debt and greed can lead a person to the wrong path. No matter how clever the accused pretends to be, Delhi Police’s cyber team is capable of reaching every criminal through technology,” said Nidhan Valson, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Central District.