Chennai, Oct 14 (BPNS)
Tamil Nadu police is on high alert after several cases of duping and cheating gullible people of their hard-earned money were reported from several parts of the state.
On October 12, the Chennai police arrested five people after they cheated almost 18000 investors luring them to invest in a scheme wherein the investors were promised huge returns.
The investors were mostly from Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem, and Tiruppur and the company had promised them with doubling their money in a quick time.
Assistant Commissioner of Police, Neelakarani, K.N.Sudarshan while speaking to IANS said, “ The accused who had modest educational background have cheated highly educated people. We have arrested five people and investigations are on for the arrest of a woman accomplice.”
Police said that the main accused in this case Sharath Kumar (35) was a school dropout and started the operations in the mode of a multi-level marketing (MLM) company a decade ago in Western Tamil Nadu and expanded their operations to other parts of the state.
They lured people by promising Rs 10 lakh on an investment of Rs 10,000 and told the investors that they had a stock of Iridium in Germany in a company named,’ John MacNan’. However, they did not return the money as promised and this infuriated the investors who took up the matter with the district-level leaders of the company.
A complaint was lodged at the Neelankarani police station by a person named K. Chalapathy of Mogappair and the police arrested the cheaters. Interestingly only a handful of people have come up with the complaints after the arrest of the fraudsters either due to the police and people coming to know of their illicit money details and some due to the shame of getting cheated.
Tamil Nadu police have commenced regular awareness programmes on such issues and all the district police superintendents were directed to convey down the line. This was to effectively communicate to the people at the bottom level is not to fall into the trap of such fraudsters who are into cheating people by promising the sky as far as investments are concerned.
Chennai police have also busted an online betting racket and arrested two people on Tuesday for promising huge returns on online betting. Harikrishnan, an engineer by profession had cheated several people after taking on lease a betting portal based in Europe in which people could place bets in various casinos as well as in live sporting events.
Vignesh of Choolaimedu in Chennai turned into online betting and lost 87 lakhs while betting in Harikrishnan’s portal. He had borrowed money from friends and lost it all and lodged a complaint with the cybercrime police who traced Harikrishnan to a five-star hotel in Chennai.
Police said that Harikrishnan when arrested had 24.68 lakh rupees, 24 sovereigns of gold,10 mobile phones, a laptop, and a high-end car in his procession. He was also involved in Cricket betting and huge money was transferred into his account and police said that around 1.5 crore rupees were in his account when it was blocked.
With fly-by-night operators in the guise of genuine financial groups on the prowl, police have advised people to make sure of the credentials of the company before investing their hard-earned money.
A senior officer with the Chennai police on conditions of anonymity told BPNS,” I have come across several cases in which very well-known professionals like doctors, engineers, and marketing people have lost their money to such flyby night operators. Several politicians have also lost their money but no one would complain as most of this money is unaccounted and in some cases, people are ashamed of getting cheated despite their official and social status.”
