NOB-Tirupati news: A gang of cyber fraudsters who were looting crores of rupees under the guise of digital arrest in Tirupati district has been busted and a total of eight accused have been arrested, District SP L. Subbaraidu, IPS, said in a press conference organized at the SP office. Speaking on this occasion, the District SP revealed that in addition to seizing two mobile phones from the accused, Rs. 2.5 lakh cash of the victim in the joint bank account of the two accused has been frozen. The arrested accused include Dande Kranthi Kumar, Nimmala Pawan Kumar from Anantapur district, Mane Koti Babu from Hyderabad, Parapala Srinivas from Rajahmundry area, Marakattu Chandrasekhar Reddy from Bellary district, Kodela Sivashankar, Nagaridhan Prashanth Reddy and Gundaveni Gautam from Hyderabad. In this case, targeting a 65 year old senior citizen from Tirupati city, unknown persons called him on WhatsApp and introduced themselves as “Mumbai CBI officials” and threatened him by saying that his name was in a Rs. 583 crore money laundering case. They cheated him by forcing him to transfer money from his bank account to various accounts, believing that they would investigate through a WhatsApp video call. In this way, a total of Rs. 80 lakh was deposited from the victim in mule accounts in various states. When the fraudsters did not respond to the victim, he realized that a cybercrime had been committed and filed a complaint at the Tirupati East Police Station, a case was registered and an investigation was initiated. A special team formed under the leadership of SDPO Tirupati and conducted an investigation, and it was revealed that the funds were first transferred from the victim’s account to two mule accounts, from there to other accounts in 14 states, and finally to the accounts of gaming app users. During the investigation, it was learned that the main accused, Koti Babu, had connections with Daniel in Haryana, TEON in China, and a foreign network named “D” through Telegram. Koti Babu went to Cambodia in January 2024 and worked with the cyber fraudster network there for 24 days. After returning, it was confirmed that he used to collect a large number of mule accounts through people like Srinivas, Chandrasekhar Reddy, Sivashankar, Prashanth Reddy, and Gautam. He said that the investigation revealed that all the details of those accounts and internet banking evidence were sent abroad through Telegram and that they were getting commission on every transaction. Similarly, it was confirmed that Kranthi Kumar and Pawan Kumar opened a joint current account in the name of DKK Film Distributors with false documents and Rs. 30 lakhs related to this case were deposited in that account and then the entire amount was transferred to a foreign cyber network. As it was revealed that this account was also used in some other cases, the investigation is also ongoing on those. In addition, they are also investigating whether the employees of the relevant bank were involved in opening this account. He said that special teams are trying to arrest the key accused in this case, Mohamud (Yusuf Guda, Hyderabad). He clarified that the temptations like “If you transfer money to your account, we will give you a commission”, “Submit KYC – get monthly income”, “If you open a new current account, you will get salary” are completely the methods of cyber criminals. He warned that giving your bank account to be used in such illegal transactions is tantamount to aiding cybercrime, and there is a risk of not only blocking the account but also registering cases under the IPC and IT Acts. He once again reminded that since digital arrest scams have spread across the country recently, do not respond to video calls from unknown numbers, as no government investigation agency will make an arrest through video call. In case of any suspicious situation, the SP appealed to immediately inform the cyber toll free 1930, emergency number 112 or Tirupati Police WhatsApp 80999 99977. The SP congratulated SDPO Tirupati, Bhaktavachalam, East CI Srinivasulu, Cyber ​​Crime CI Vinod Kumar, East SI Hemadri and the staff for their efforts in investigating this case.