Kerala: Police nab man from Bengaluru in Rs 3.43 crore investment fraud

Police said they arrested a key member of a racket that allegedly swindled over Rs 3.43 crore from a doctor in Ulloor here in an online investment scam on Friday.

The arrested individual, Dhanush Narayanaswamy, a Bengaluru native, was taken into custody there on September 29.

He was brought to Kerala on September 30 and later remanded by the Thiruvananthapuram Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court.

According to police, the gang’s modus operandi involved winning the victim’s trust by luring him into online investments promising high returns. Once convinced, the victim transferred substantial sums, which the gang converted into cryptocurrency and transferred abroad.

The victim lodged a complaint after realising he had been cheated. Investigation revealed that the gang had contacted him via WhatsApp and Telegram, coercing him to invest. The money was transferred into multiple bank accounts, which police tracked to an account linked to a fake company in Bengaluru.

Further probe into this account led to the identification and arrest of Narayanaswamy, who had opened accounts under the pretext of running a company to facilitate investment fraud.

Police recovered Rs 1.2 crore from his account and said investigations are continuing to identify other members of the racket and recover the remaining amount.