Social media fake followers racket: Chtrbox CEO Pranay Swaroop reportedly has 30,000 clients

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Mumbai: Pranay Swaroop, the CEO of Chtrbox which is under the scanner in connection with the social media fake followers case, reportedly has over 30,000 clients, according to the Mumbai Police Crime Branch sources.

As per sources, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch has directed Pranay to submit the list of his 30,000 clients on July 28.

The Mumbai Police Crime Branch has also summoned social media influencer Ankita Arora and actress Aashi Sharma, who are said to be the clients of apprehended Kashif Mansoor.

Kashif who has been arrested for involvement in the scam used to operate a website www.amvsmm.com, and his company used to provide fake followers.

Aashi Sharma and Ankita Arora have reportedly over 8 lakh and 6 lakh fake social media followers respectively.

Earlier on July 24, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch had summoned Pranay along with his wife Julie and social media influencer and fashion blogger Ankit Arora.

Chtrbox is one of the leading social media influencers marketing company which was also accused of leaking private data of as many as 49 million Instagram users in 2019.

The company provided fake likes, comments, views, retweets, subscribers, and followers to its customers on social media platforms and in return, fees were collected in dollars.

The company's network was spread almost all over the world. Apart from India, it was mainly working in Russia, America, Britain, France Italy, and Israel. 

This social media scam came to light when Bollywood singer Bhumi Trivedi found a fake profile of hers on social media and lodged a complaint with the police.

Probing the case of Bhumi, the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police arrested Abhishek Dawade, who used to work for a company named Followers Kart. This company provided more than 700 services in 80 different categories. These services were linked to many social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, Spotify, and Sound Cloud.

In the investigation so far, Mumbai Police have found a few Bollywood personalities, sports and as many as 200 high-profile people who have allegedly paid to get followers.