Hyderabad: The Commissioner’s Task Force along with East Zone team of Hyderabad City Police apprehended a Mechanical Engineer for allegedly conning 150 persons on the pretext of offering loans at low interest and collecting the bank details and OTPs (One Time Password).
The alleged culprit has cheated the victims to the tune of Rs 11.50 lakh. He has been identified as Mareti Srinivas Rao, 27 who is a resident of Amberpet. He is a native of Andhra Pradesh. Rao completed his B.Tech and M. Tech from private colleges affiliated to JNTU Hyderabad, police said.
The police have seized Rs. 11.50 lakh, 12 mobile phones, 29 SIM cards, one laptop, one motor bike, three ATM cards and different newspaper clippings of advertisements.
City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said, “The accused Mareti Srinivas Rao used to tell the victims that he runs a finance company. In the name of processing the loan application the culprit used to aske victims to show their minimum bank balance of Rs 20,000 for Rs 2 lakh loan to be taken. Later he used to collect the bank details, ATM pin numbers over a WhatsApp voice call.”
The commissioner further said that the accused using the bank details of victims processes an online payment. He used to ask them to share the OTP in the eagerness of availing the loan the innocent people shares the OTPs and lose their thousands of rupees from their bank accounts.
S. Chaitanya Kumar, Addl. Deputy Commissioner of police, said that the accused use to transfer the money from victim’s bank account to Airtel Payments Bank Account and then to the various bank accounts. For luring the people he frequently gave advertisements in the popular newspapers in various districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
It has been a challenging case since he was not identified by any of his victims. Except the phone conversation he never turned up before them nor did have any office. The accused is wanted in 20 cases and was being searched by 12 districts’ police of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
By Mohammed Hussain mohammedhussain.reporter@gmail.com