Mumbai Crime: SIT arrest 29-year-old accused in fake followers racket

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The State Investigation Team (SIT) led by DCP (Detection) Nandkumar Thakur has arrested a 29-year-old man in the fake follower's racket. The accused identified as Kashif Mansoor, a civil engineer by profession was arrested from Jogeshwari (W).

According to police officials, the accused owns and operates a portal that provides followers, views, subscribers, likes, etc to profiles on various social medial platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook among others. "The accused person has so far completed approx 25,000 orders resulting in approx 2.3 Crores of followers/views/likes etc," a police officer said.

The accused will be produced before the Hon. ACMM on July 23. A few days ago, the Mumbai Police had arrested a man for running a social media marketing fraud racket that created fake profiles after Bollywood playback singer Bhoomi Trivedi filed a police complaint.

The singer had approached the police commissioner on July 11 seeking action against unknown persons who had purportedly created her fake profile on Instagram. Following this, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh had an SIT under the supervision of DCP Detection Nandkumar Thakur to investigate the matter of identity theft and also social media fake followers racket.

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The SIT team has so far identified 68 portals that are engaged in the supply of such fake followers/views/likes etc. The arrested person belongs one of these 68 portals.

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