Bollywood, sports and high profile personalities on Mumbai Police radar over social media 'paid followers' racket

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New Delhi: The Mumbai police recently busted a racket of fake followers on social media. Several Bollywood celebrities, sports personalities and some high profile builders might be guilty of actually buying followers to stay ahead in the social media race. According to the police, the racket involved paying people to increase their followers on social media.

The cops have found out that a few international companies are also involved in the scam. Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh has formed an SIT to investigate this as cops sense this might also pose a threat to law and order situation in the country. 

Mumbai Police's Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) arrested a person named Abhishek Dinesh Daude, in connection with fake profiles on social media. The cops suspect international social media marketing company named 'www.followerskart.com' being involved in it where Abhishek worked.

These days, whoever boasts of having a huge number of followers list on social media platforms is considered to be an influencer on a digital platform. This practice, however, has led to the rise of fake profiles and paid followers which has become a business on its own. 

Big companies pay huge amounts for advertising to such personalities. But with Mumbai Police busting this racket of creating fake followers on social media networks, a lot of fake profiles are under the scanner.

Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police Vinay Kumar Chaubey said, "We have investigated and found as many as 54 firms involved in this racket. SIT comprising Crime Branch along with Cyber Cell has been formed which will help in investigating this case."

In fact, this social media scam came to light after Bollywood singer Bhumi Trivedi found a fake profile of hers on social media. She lodged the complaint and took police assistance. 

A person created Bhumi's fake profile on Instagram and chatted with people and kept screenshots of it. The fraudster showed these to others to increase followers. In the investigation so far, Mumbai Police have found a few Bollywood personalities, sports and as many as 176 high profile people who have allegedly paid to get followers.

Police suspects in this scam, manually or BOT tool has been used. The latter is an automated general response system which copies a human behaviour and replies. The investigation has begun and soon more names will be revealed.