A fraudster who lured a Naval Dockyard employee with a phoney prize of a Tata Indica car has fallen into the hands of the Cyber Crime Cell.
Poliseeti Eswar Rao, a resident of Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, allegedly lured the dockyard worker, Netram Singh, into parting with money to make good on the ‘prize’ he had ‘won’.
Draw of lots
Back in March, Mr. Netram Singh responded to a query on TV and called up the cell phone number given.
A day later, he received a call from Pradeep Kumar Goop, claiming to be a manager of Tata Motors.
Mr. Netram Singh was told that his query had come up trumps in a draw of lots and a Tata Indica would be his prize.
Mr. Singh fell into the trap of fraudsters, who talked him into depositing Rs. 7,500, Rs. 18,900, and Rs. 45,000 in different bank accounts under the pretext of insurance, tax and transport costs of the car. It was only after the third payment that Mr. Singh realised that he had been conned and he reported the case to the Malkapuram police station.
The case was transferred to the Cyber Crime Cell, which tracked the IP address of the cell phones used by the fraudsters to communicate with the victim, inspector K. Satyanarayana Rao said.
One member of the team of fraudsters, Easwar Rao, was tracked down to Jamshedpur and arrested.
He was brought to Vizag on a transit warrant on Sunday.
Two other members, Pradeep Kumar Goop and A.K. Basak, said to be a former employee of the SBI, are still at large.
Another case
In another case, the Sub-Inspector of the Airport Police Station K. Suresh and his team arrested another online lottery scamster, Dhirendra Singh, a resident of Sewanagar in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, and brought him to the city on a transit warrant.
Lottery
Dhirendra Singh allegedly lured his victim, P. Venkata Ramana of Parawada mandal, into paying up Rs. 1.31 crore to realise a Rs. 5-crore ‘lottery’ he had won.
According to Inspector K. Satyanarayna Rao, about 30 persons were involved in this scam. So far, five of them, including Dhirendra Singh, have been arrested.
Two other members of the gang are at large