Indian man arrested for posing as Spanish actor to extort money from women

New Delhi, Oct 12 (EFE).- A man was arrested in India for impersonating Spanish actor Manu Rios – known for his role in the teleseries Elite – to obtain “private” images of women and later use them for extortion, a police officer told EFE Wednesday.

Abbuzar Rehman, 22, used the photo of Manu Rios as his profile picture “to lure young girls on Instagram and get their private photographs,” the Deputy police commissioner for New Delhi (North), Sagar Singh Kulsi, told EFE.

The case came to the attention of the authorities when a 25-year-old girl from the Indian capital fell into Rehman’s trap.

What started as an online friendship between the girl and the fake Rios soon turned into a virtual nightmare, Kulsi explained.

“He introduced himself as a small time Spanish actor. After some time she became his friend and shared her private pictures with him. Thereafter, he started demanding money from her threatening to make her pictures viral on social media,” according to the police version of the case.

The girl did not give in to his demands, and filed a complaint with the police on Saturday.

The police, after tracing the IP address from which the profile was created and also the mobile phone used for it, apprehended Rehman on Monday.

The police said the accused was also in contact with other young women, always posing as the Spanish actor and using the Google Translate application “to speak in English with them” because he is not fluent in the language.

“On his interrogation, it was revealed that the alleged man started using Instagram but his followers were very less. So he searched on web and downloaded photographs of a famous Spanish actor, “Manu Rios” (…) (and) made a fake Instagram ID to grab the attention of young women,” the police said in a statement. EFE

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