Online scams, forgery and frauds are not an alien concept to a country like India. Time and again, the methods and way of conducting fraudulent activities might have changed or evolved but the act in itself hasn’t diminished. While the police and cyber cells always do their best to keep a check, somehow or the other, these scamsters figure out a way to outsmart law and order. Some time back, a web show called ‘Video Cam Scam’ that released on Epic On created a lot of noise and buzz around the impact of online scams. It even trended on platforms like Twitter for a long time. However, do any of you know that the creator Pavan Malu was actually inspired to create the show because he managed to see through it successfully from a psychological point of view? Yes, that’s right.
While everyone talks about scams and how one shouldn’t indulge in it by being careful, not everyone manages to successfully find out the root case. However, creator Pavan Malu feels that a sense of being alone emotionally and finding someone to talk to on social media as a companion is one of the biggest reasons why people fall into the trap. When asked to brief more about the same, he says and we quote,
“What does one do when he is emotionally alone? What does one do when his closest people are not giving him time? He wants to share something but no one wants to hear. In such cases, he tries to find someone who can hear him, console him, give him that shoulder to cry or give some time to let him speak his heart out. He needs someone who doesn’t judge him. This is the point at which one is completely helpless, vulnerable and desperate. I came across a few incidents like these and then followed and researched more to reach a new scam. The scam was such that when these men were troubled, they started talking to stranger women on fraud apps. These women then woo them and make them remove their clothes and then record their videos (like a screen recording). After that, they blackmail them. When we were researching these apps, we found more than 50-60 such apps which actually existed. So many people started falling into this trap. That’s when I thought that a show like ‘Video Cam Scam’ should be created. Everyday, the number of victims is increasing and it’s important to address this issue.”
Well, kudos to Pavan Malu for actually being a visionary and doing something out of the box like to spread awareness. ‘Video Cam Scam’ has already received a lot of critical acclaim and we won’t be surprised if it gets more going forward. Stay tuned for more updates.
