In a big success against fake online profiles and fraudulent business activities on social media, the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Mumbai Police’s crime branch on Wednesday cracked India’s first international social media influencers’ fraud after receiving complaints from Bollywood playback singer Bhoomi Trivedi. The cops also nabbed one person in connection with this case who created around 5 lakh fake followers for social media influencers on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
“The accused is a part of a larger international fraud racket, which functions by creating crores of fake identities on various social media platforms and thereby creating fake performance statistics such as fake followers, fake comments, fake views etc in order to inflate influencers’ performance statistics,” said DCP, Detection, Nandkumar Thakur of Mumbai Police.
Earlier on Saturday, singer Bhoomi Trivedi approached Mumbai Police Commissioner and complained about her fake profile on Instagram and said these fake profile makers were approaching film personalities to use their services for activating their profiles. Acting swiftly to her complaints, Police Commissioner Parambir Singh ordered the crime branch to probe into this matter and later this mega scam was unearthed which unveiled how social media influencers boosted their number of followers.
The cops have arrested a 20-yearold man Abhishek Daude, who worked for a web portal (www.followerskart.com) which claimed to be an official public company that implemented social networking services for its clients. The police said that the above-mentioned portal was one such that actively created fake followers. Daude created over 5 lakh fake followers, for a total of 176 profiles on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, in order to fraudulently project them as influencers. According to the police, fake profiles have been created on social media platforms and such profiles are then used for activities in social media marketing. Fake profiles of celebrities too are created to make money.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Police has also announced a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the illegal aspects of social media marketing businesses operating in violation of the IT Act. Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, Vinay Kumar Choubey said, “We have estimated that more than 100 such social media marketing portals which provide fake followers, found operating through Indian, as well as foreign internet networks and servers and 54 of them have been identified so far. We have formed SIT that has not only crime branch people but also cyber experts.”
Mumbai Police explains that this is done either manually or by certain illegal software (mostly known as bots). By manipulating the existing system of respective social networks, these racketeers post such fake followers, etc. These followers are then sold to buyers who want to show an increase in their social media activity. The Daily Guardian found out that organic followers are fine but fake followers are illegal. There are lists of such carts online like ‘shopping cart’ which sell followers on current rates. In some sites, for 1,000 fake followers, an individual has to pay about Rs 2,000 (Rs 2 per follower). Cyber-crime expert Ritesh Bhatia says, “Fake followers are nothing but fake social media. Profiles that are created in order to follow mass social media profiles. These fake profiles do not interact or engage with the accounts they are following and are usually inactive. Most of them are bot accounts — automatically computer created accounts that are generated only to follow. This is one reason we see many influencers having lachs of followers but unfortunately many of them are inactive.”