Two mules in digital arrest case caught, police recover ₹10 lakh of ₹4.7 crore
Following the digital arrest case of a 75-year-old retired engineer, the South-East cyber crime police arrested two men, including an industrialist from Hyderabad, who allegedly received the money in their bank accounts. The police also exposed the link of a casino in Sri Lanka to the cyber fraud which is being probed in detail.
The accused according to the police trapped the victim, posing as CBI and ED officials, and threatened to book him for money laundering three months ago, and forced him to pay ₹4.7 crore over a period of time. The accused even forced him to share property documents which they tried to use as collateral to get personal loans.
The police, based on a tip-off from their Chennai counterparts, approached the victim, who was not aware of the scam and was transferring the money to different accounts.
He had recently transferred ₹10 lakh to the account belonging to the driver of Ishwar Singh, a Hyderabad-based businessman.
Based on the information, a police team tracked down Ishwar Singh who confessed that he had gone to Sri Lanka to gamble in the casino with ₹25 lakh.
After losing ₹15 lakh, he returned to Hyderabad and asked for a refund for the rest of the money from the accused in the casino. The accused asked the victim posing as CBI officials to transfer the money to Ishwar. 'He was unaware that the money he received is part of a cyber crime,' a police officer said, adding that the money has been seized and returned to the victim.
Meanwhile, the police also detained Ramnarayana Choudhary, an industrialist from Hyderabad, whose account the accused had used to transfer the money. The police found that Choudhary received ₹1.8 crore in his account which was later transferred to different accounts in Guntur and Vishakhapatnam.
The police said that both Choudhary and Singh were unaware that the money they had received in their accounts belonged to cyber crime. The police have warned people not to share their bank accounts with anyone, while a probe is on to track down the accused and expose the links of cyber frauds and casino in Sri Lanka, said Sarah Fathima, DCP (South-East division).
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