Teen arrested for duping people through fake WhatsApp accounts

According to police, a man filed a complaint last year on April 22, saying his WhatsApp account was hacked.

A 15-year-old boy was apprehended from Uttar Pradesh's Mathura for allegedly creating fake WhatsApp accounts of people and demanding money from their family on the pretext of hospital emergencies, police said on Thursday.

According to police, a man filed a complaint last year on April 22, saying his WhatsApp account was hacked and someone was demanding money from his relatives and friends by using his identity and photos.

The teenager told the complainant's relatives that he was in an urgent need of money for hospital admission and would return it in two days. One of his relatives transferred Rs 80,000 to the teenager, a senior police officer said.

During investigation, police conducted a raid in Mathura and apprehended the juvenile on Wednesday. Two mobile phones allegedly used in the crime were recovered from him, he said.

The officer disclosed that the accused gathered information from randomly picked public profiles on social media platforms, police said. After that, he would create a fake WhatsApp account using the person's photograph sourced from his social media account, police said.

The juvenile would then contact the close relatives of victim and demanded money citing some emergency in a hospital, they said. They said they have detected a money trail of more than Rs eight lakh.

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