Man sentenced to 2 years prison for extortion, blackmailing woman

Hyderabad: A cyber fraudster, Jambada Laxmi Varaprasad, was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for cheating a woman. He was also fined a sum of Rs. 1000 for his crime, which involved creating a fake Faceboob profile and impersonating cine actor Ravi Krishna. 

According to a press note by the Cyberabad police, Varaprasad was sentenced and fined by the IX Additional Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Kukatpally, which is a special court for Cyber Crimes. The  convict was booked for cheating a woman victim, who is a resident of Mallampet in Hyderabad.

Varaprasad created a fake Facebook profile claiming to be Ravi Krishna and sent a friend request to the victim, who verified his Facebook page and mistook it to be genuine. She accepted the request, after which Varaprasad sent her a message through Facebook messenger as Ravi Krishna and they began talking. Immediately then, he asked her to send him a normal selfie and later he also asked her to send a nude picture, to which she only sent one picture without a face.

He gave her his WhatsApp numbers and on the same day, he asked Rs. 2,000. After a week, he again asked Rs. 30,000 and eventually started blackmailing her, by threatening to upload her nude pictures on social media with false allegations. The victim hence gave him Rs. 5,000 more, but Varaprasad constantly demanded more money and collected a total amount of Rs. 2,20,000 through blackmail.

A case was registered and investigated into by officials, who arrested the accused on November 25, 2019. The Cyberabad police have advised people to not accept or send friend requests to unknown people, and also be aware of the fake profiles of cine actors and other celebrities created by criminals or fraudsters.