6 held for duping 74-year-old woman of Rs 24 cr in Karnataka

BENGALURU: A tip-off from a private bank manager helped police expose one of the biggest digital arrest frauds in Karnataka and arrest six people on charges of fleecing around Rs 24 crore from a 74-year-old woman. During investigation, cops found the arrested persons were involved in multiple cybercrimes in Belagavi district and many other states.

Laxmi Ramamurthy, who was a teacher in Dubai, stays alone in Shivajinagar. She owns properties in Bengaluru and Mumbai, police said. Since her children are in the US, she wanted to sell some of her properties and give money to them.

Laxmi started receiving calls from fraudsters posing as CBI and ED officers in Feb. They accused her of being involved in money laundering and threatened to arrest her. When she pleaded innocence, they made video calls through WhatsApp. The fraudsters appeared in the guise of cops with a police station set-up in the background. They kept her under ‘digital arrest’ and warned her not to speak to anyone about the calls.

Claiming that they needed to verify her bank accounts as per RBI guidelines, they asked her to transfer money from her accounts, fixed deposits, and other investments. She transferred Rs 24 crore from her ICICI Bank account in 26 transactions to 23 mule accounts belonging to 10 banks across the country between Feb 10 and April 24. After Laxmi ran out of money, they asked her to pledge her gold ornaments and transfer the money to them. Every time she transferred money, she visited the bank and made RTGS transactions.

On April 24, she went to the bank to pledge her gold to transfer Rs 3 crore. The bank manager of the Cunningham Road branch suspected something fishy and alerted cybercrime police. A team rushed to the bank, counselled her and explained it was a cyber fraud.

A team under DCP (crime 2) Raja Imam Kasim P, inspectors Mohammed Mukkaram, Deepak, Subbarao and others managed to nab six people – N Shivagnanam from Erode in Tamil Nadu, Akkach Mallick from Mumbai, Palakbhai Patel and Amit Narendra Patel from Ahmedabad, Om Prakash Rajput from Delhi, and Gaurav Kumar from Bihar.

How they did it

The police team asked Laxmi to tell the fraudsters that she would transfer the money. With technical assistance, the team then traced the suspects’ locations. Shivagnanam, 84, a retired bank employee, had opened a trust named Aram Services Foundation to receive money from the cyber syndicate for commission. Most of the accused had opened trusts to receive fraudulent money, except Gaurav.

Gaurav instead hired Om Prakash, who runs an electrical business, to open mule accounts and offered 15% for every transaction. The money fleeced from Laxmi had been transferred to around 9,000 accounts, including gambling sites, cops said. The police team froze over Rs 4 crore and also obtained a release order for more than Rs 1.4 crore from the court. In addition to these, the recovery of another Rs 1.4 crore is under progress.

Police said Palakbhai Patel and Amit Narendra Patel are connected to a Rs 15-crore digital arrest fraud in Belagavi. Sivagnanam is involved in four other cyberfraud cases and Akkach Mallick in three.

Laxmi has gone to the US and is staying with her children. Police said they will transfer the frozen money to her account.