Pune: The Pune cyber police arrested four people — three from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and another from Thane — for their alleged involvement in defrauding a retired entrepreneur (85) from Hadapsar of Rs22.03 crore after promising him handsome returns on investment in online share-trading.Pune commissioner of police (CP) Amitesh Kumar said, “Our team worked hard on the case and nabbed the suspects after studying the money trail.”A team headed by senior inspector Swapnali Shinde, inspector Sangeeta Deokate, and sub-inspectors Snehal Adsule and Sushil Damare carried out the operation. The four arrestetd men — Munilkumar Surendra Singh (51) of Ambarnath in Thane, and Akash Chandrashekhar Marathe (27), Lala Keshav Umap (26) and Parmeshwar Dilip Dabhade (23) from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar — were produced before a city court on Monday. They were remanded in police custody until Thursday.“Singh runs a private security agency in Thane, while Marathe is unemployed. Umap and Dabhade are casual workers. They provided their bank accounts to the main fraudster(s) in the crime against a commission. Their bank accounts were used as mule accounts. A large sum of money was parked in their accounts for a few hours, and then it was transferred to several other bank accounts,” Shinde said.The retired entrepreneur lodged a complaint of cheating with the Pune cyber police on Jan 19 related to the Rss22.03-crore fraud. According to the police, Rs1 crore of the total conned amount was transferred to the bank account of one of the four arrested men. Rs1.5 lakh to Rs2.5 lakh was parked in the bank accounts of the other three. “We are exploring the links between the prime suspect(s) in the case and the mule bank account holders. We hope that we will reach the main conspirator(s) of the crime,” Shinde said.The victim claimed that he was defrauded between Oct last year and Jan 12 this year. In three months, he allegedly transferred money to 150 accounts, mostly mule accounts. He exhausted all the money he raised through selling movable and immovable properties after the closure of his company a few years ago, the police said.The crooks used 26 cellphone numbers, including an internet-based phone number, three web links and a bogus cellphone app for online share-trading to execute the largest cyber fraud in terms of money involved so far under the jurisdiction of the Pune cyber police.
