Five Fraudsters From Gujarat Held for Duping City Woman

 Hyderabad: Five persons hailing from Ahmedabad were arrested by the Hyderabad police attached to the cyber crime department — for duping a city-based woman of Rs 3.16 crore. The five arrested persons were brought to Hyderabad and produced before a city court from where they were remanded to judicial custody.

The victim was lured to stock trading by the fraudsters and the former was asked to invest money online in a fictitious company dealing in stocks.

The arrested accused have been identified as Swayam Timaniya, 20, Meet Timaniya, 30, Brijesh Patel, 35, Harsh Pandya, 31, and Shankar Lal, 66, and they had floated a bogus stock trading company wherein the victim was lured by the them to invest money for receiving high returns.

In November 2023, the victim filed a complaint before the cyber cell of the Hyderabad police stating that the accused had contacted her (victim) and she was lured by them to invest in the stock market with100% returns. The name of the fraudulent company was Unity Stocks.

Giving details about the case, joint commissioner (CCS&SIT) A.V. Ranganath, while speaking to reporters at a press meet on Saturday, said, “The accused asked the victim to invest in stocks which was later found be bogus. The fraudsters had opened web sites with names such as Dafabet, Unity Exchange, T20 IPL, etc. The victim was told to invest maximum money and hold it for at least six months so that she could get minimum of 30% returns of the invested principal amount. The woman taking the version of the scammers on a face-value, transferred a sum of Rs 3,16,34,764, into their bank accounts,” Ranganath said.

“Our special teams took up the investigation and on December 12, arrested a person named Ronak Tanna, who was the bank account supplier and had sold hundreds of bank accounts to the fraudsters operating in Dubai, Hong Kong and other countries,” said the joint commissioner.

Further probe into the fraudulent money trail, it came to light that the money was again entering the Indian bank accounts through Angadia (Hawala) back channels, Ranganath said, adding, “Based on confessions made by the arrested Ronak Tanna, the police were successful in nabbing five other accused Swayam Timaniya, Meet Timaniya, Brijesh Patel, Harsh Pandya and Shankar La, who were assisting the main mastermind of the racket Arjun and Yug. The five accused were arrested from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar of Gujarat.”

During interrogation, fraudster Swayam Timaniya disclosed that he was in direct contact with the mastermind Arjun. Meet Tamaniya and Brijesh Patel hailing from Ahmedabad were assisting Swayam to get in touch with Arjun.

The accused had convinced Harsh Pandya, 31, of Gandhinagar in Gujarat who was operating Management Services in Fino bank, if they would deposit money in his bank he would provide them liquid cash, to which Pandya agreed, the joint commissioner said.

All fraudsters were working in tandem on commission basis. Once the main accused used to transfer the amount into Harsh Pandya bank accounts, the other accused used to deliver the cash to their known persons through Angadia (Hawala) in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, the joint commissioner said.

Police have recovered Rs 8 lakh cash, a laptop and 12 mobile phones from the accused. The accused along with seizures were produced before the city court and later remanded to judicial custody.

Public also cautioned people not to believe unknown persons introduced through social media platforms.