Palluruthy youth arrested after gang dupes man of ₹27 lakh by posing as ED officials

Kochi: The Kunnathunad police have arrested a youth who is allegedly a part of a gang which duped a man of over ₹27 lakh by posing as officials of the Directorate of Enforcement (ED). The arrested is Ananthu Krishnan (27), a native of Palluruthy, Edakochi. 

The gang cheated the complainant of the huge sum by contacting him over phone and video chat platform Skype by posing as first as Customs officials and then as ED sleuths. 

The fraudsters went by what has apparently become the playbook of cyber scammers as they told the victim that a parcel he sent had landed under Customs’ scanner as it contained contraband items. The criminals told the victim that the parcel contained five laptops, bank documents and 400g of MDMA. 

When the man said he did not have any idea about such a parcel, the scammers claimed that it could be a case of stolen identity and sought the Aadhaar details of the victim to get him off the case. Once he sent the details, the criminal gang contacted him again, this time as ED officials who claimed to have identified financial irregularities in his accounts. They forced him to transfer Rs 27,49,898 from two of his bank accounts to different accounts. 

The man approached the police after realising that he had been duped. The police traced the money trail starting with the victim’s transactions and found that the dupers had sent the money to different persons, including Ananthu’s account in the Palluruthy branch of a bank. The police then summoned him as part of the probe, and during the questioning, the investigators found him to be a part of the larger network, the police said in a statement. Further investigation is underway into the case.