Movie piracy site iBomma’s admin, Immidi Ravi’s arrest, has been a hot topic in the industry for the last couple of days. He was nabbed by the Hyderabad police two days ago and is currently under remand. Meanwhile, Hyderabad City Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar, along with the film industry’s bigwigs Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, Dil Raju, Suresh Babu, and a few others, held a press meet and shared shocking details about the pirate.
Sajjanar said that Ravi pirated around 21,000 films, including The Godfather from the 1970s to the recent film OG. He said that with this movie piracy, iBomma collected data of more than 50 lakh users and stored the data on the dark web for financial and cyber fraud. Sajjanar appealed to people to be aware of such cyber frauds and not to fall prey to this kind of website.
Reportedly, Ravi earned around Rs. 20 crores through movie piracy, and police seized around Rs. 3 crores from him. It was also stated that he procured ID cards from different states. After the film industry members filed a complaint against him, Ravi obtained Caribbean citizenship, renouncing his Indian citizenship to avoid risk. The police further stated that Ravi operated from multiple countries, like the United States, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, using more than 21 domains.
Hailing from Visakhapatnam, Ravi pursued his graduation in B.Sc. Computers. Holding a fake ID in the name of Vellala Prahlad Kumar, Ravi operated his piracy scam. He used to run 65 piracy sites and also promote betting apps through them. He used to steal the personal data of users who downloaded his APK app through download links.
People generally assume that watching films on piracy sites will cause no harm, not knowing that their data is being used for financial frauds. After Ravi’s arrest, it is high time that people who watch films on piracy websites be aware of such fraudulent activities and avoid accessing such sites online.
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