By M.K. Ashoka
Bengaluru, Jun 24 (IANS): Cyber Crime police's Whitefield division in Bengaluru has ended the free run of a conman, a womanizer who cheated three women of Rs 40 lakh by claiming to be a royal scion from Mysuru and promising them marriage in July, 2021.
Muttu K @ Vinay K @ Siddharth Raj Urs @ Sandy, a resident of Mysuru, has been arrested following a complaint by a woman who alleged that he had cheated her of Rs 19 lakh. Further investigations revealed that he had cheated two more women and the police suspect that many more gullible women may have fallen prey to him.
The accused made calls from the lobbies of luxury hotels and said that he is a software engineer working for a US tech company. He had registered as Siddharth Raj Urs from the Mysuru royal family on several matrimonial websites. He had posted many pictures of small kids before the Mysuru Palace and claimed to be one among them.
The police say that the accused is a school dropout and a travel guide. He has a five-year-old daughter and took to crime after reading about a similar case.
*Karnataka police have nabbed an IIT-Kharagpur dropout 34-year-old Navneeth Pandey from Uttar Pradesh for attempting to purchase a Point of Sales (POS) machine in the name of a restaurant fraudulently to siphon off money on January 2, 2023.
The police had recovered 110 debit cards, 110 credit cards, three laptops, six cell phones, fake seals, cheque books and passbooks of different banks from the residence of the accused.
Navneeth collected debit cards and credit cards from persons known to him and made an attempt to purchase a POS machine claiming to be the owner of the Kidambis Kitchen Restaurant of Banashankari.
The fraud came to light after the bank staffer went to inspect the restaurant before issuing the POS machine. The police are ascertaining the exact plans of committing financial fraud by the accused who is an IIT dropout.
*Ramamurthy Nagar police in Bengaluru arrested an ICICI Bank manager on the charge of illegally passing a cheque for Rs 3.9 crore on November 13, 2019.
Ramamurthy Nagar ICICI Bank branch manager Prasad was arrested. The accused had passed the cheque without verification, colluding with the other accused persons.
Prasad had created fake cheques for the Damangi Foundation of Bylahongala and they were successful in siphoning off Rs 3.9 crore with his help in July 2019.
After the complaint, the four accused were caught when they were trying to deposit the money in the Nelamangala ICICI Bank branch. The police had arrested Pareekshith Naidu, Guru, Rangaswamy and another person then. After three months they took the bank manager into their custody.
These are a very few incidents of fraudsters from decent backgrounds who were ultimately caught by the Karnataka police. The department has cracked some of the most difficult and high-profile cheating cases that made national news.
However, police department sources admit that scamsters making use of the loopholes in the law continue to operate and preventive mechanisms are not effectively implemented due to the pressures on the system.
Retired SP S.K. Umesh, talking to IANS, explained that those with money get trapped and end up losing money. They have more faith in fraudsters than themselves. Their entire focus will be on returns and they are only bothered about the interest and forget about the capital.
No matter how many reports are published in the media and programmes are made on television, people keep on falling prey to the scams and scamsters because of their greed. The victims do not bother to see whether the fraudsters have permits at least to carry out the businesses they claim to run.
The scamsters keep agents and pay them handsome commissions, in turn the agents will ensure the investments by any means. One fine day, the fraudsters vanish with huge sums of money. The victims do not want to give their original records as they fear they won't get their investment back.