Casting Director Cheats Women Through Fake Audition Calls, Arrested

A 37-year-old casting director was arrested for allegedly cheating women by offering them roles in non-existing Bollywood movies on social media, police said on Saturday.

The accused has been identified as Sunny Kumar Verma, a resident of Haridwar in Uttrakhand, they said.

The matter was reported to police on May 12 by a woman who in her complaint said she was duped of more than Rs 20,000 by a casting manager on Instagram.

According to her complaint, the woman had responded to a post on Instagram by a casting director who elicited pitches from female leads for audition in Hindi films.

Responding to the ad, she shared her photos and details with the person, and got an email in return listing terms and conditions for the movie 'Elaan 2,' a senior police officer said.

She was asked in the mail to deposit a "refundable security" of Rs 13,500 in the company's account within four hours to lock her role, which she did.

On April 29, the man again messaged her on WhatsApp about a role in another movie 'Jee Le Zarra' and asked for Rs 9,800 in security deposit, police said.

She again agreed and paid Rs 9,800. But this time she didn't receive any confirmation mail, the officer said.

On May 10, the man blocked her on WhatsApp as well as on Instagram, police said.

In their investigation, police traced the mobile number used to send messages to the woman to one Sunny Kumar Verma.

They also found that the bank account in which the money was transferred was registered in the name of one of his family members, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Guriqbal Singh Sidhu said.

After his arrest, Verma revealed he had studied event management and was running an event management company IMG venture till 2020 from Kalka in Panchkula.

He claimed to have organised a number of events which were attended by many Bollywood celebrities, the DCP said.

Verma posted several pictures of him with celebrities on his Instagram account and gained a decent following. At the time of the arrest, he had 62,000 followers on the Facebook-owned app.

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, his company suffered huge losses, police said.

In order to maintain his lavish lifestyle, he started luring young ambitious women for roles in Bollywood movies, which never were there.

Police found that hundreds of women had responded with their portfolios to his Instagram story for auditions.

He was found to have taken money from several of them as "security deposit" and spent it on his personal expenses, police said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)