They Follow You on Instagram, Then Use Your Face To Make Deepfake Porn in This Sex Extortion Scam

In a new sex extortion scam reported in India, blackmailers follow you on Instagram, make incessant video calls until you pick up, and then demand you pay them a hefty sum of money or else they’d slide into your friends’ and family’s DMs with deepfake porn featuring your face.

Police have narrowed down on an alleged gang that operates at the tri-junction of the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Cops say such attacks have not only become increasingly common but also signal a new wave of phishing attacks. 

Earlier, police investigating cyber crimes found that the tri-junction location creates a “black spot” for mobile networks, where the presence of multiple telecommunication towers makes it difficult to trace the exact location of a device. The extorted money is also routed through multiple payment gateways and online wallets, creating a maze of transactions that become difficult to trace. 

India is no stranger to phishing scams. Previous modus operandi involved scammers sending phishing emails or links to fake websites and shopping portals to steal credit card data, or blackmailers claiming to have hacked into the victim’s web cam while they were watching porn. 

Police have arrested three men from the north Indian state of Haryana whom they say are linked to a larger network targeting people using deepfake porn – convincingly deceptive videos in which a person’s face is superimposed on another’s body using machine-learning AI. 

Rohan Bhasin, a 33-year-old marketing professional, was one of the victims of this sophisticated cyber crime. On July 2, he received an Instagram follow request from a woman he didn’t know. He accepted her request, however, after he saw that they had a few mutual friends. Within minutes, he got a DM from her asking for his WhatsApp number, which he refused to share. 

Then, she began video calling him multiple times over Instagram. “Initially I ignored the calls but after seven or eight of those, I answered the phone,” he told The Indian Express. “On the other side was a naked woman performing obscene acts. It took me around 15 seconds to figure out what was going on, and then I disconnected the call.”

Soon afterwards, the woman sent him a slew of blackmail messages threatening to leak his video if he did not pay her. Bhasin refused and removed her from his Instagram followers. About 15 minutes later, Bhasin got a flurry of messages and calls from his friends and family, who had received a scandalous video that appeared to be of him. 

“The scamsters had taken a picture of my face from the video call I had with them and superimposed it on someone else’s body. In the video they shared, it appears as if I am having a sex chat,” he said. 

Bhasin filed a police complaint immediately after the incident, and police now believe the suspects arrested in Haryana were involved in his case, too. 

Police said they receive hundreds of similar complaints every day, but have yet to consolidate the data from such reports. A national cyber crime portal created by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs recorded more than 317,000 cyber crimes between August 2019 and March 2021. 

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