'Sakshi Agarwal' first accused; housewife from Kochi loses Rs 2.88 crore

KOCHI: A housewife from Mattancherry lost Rs 2.88 crore in a virtual arrest scam. Mattancherry resident Shenoy's wife K Ushakumari (59) and her student daughter were duped of Rs 2,88,10,000 by threatening to file a case against her. Ushakumari is a retired accountant who worked in a private firm and her husband Vittila Shenoy was a high-ranking official in a private bank.

A person claiming to be Santosh Rao of Mumbai's Tilak Nagar police station made a video call to Ushakumari's WhatsApp number. He threatened that a case had been registered against Ushakumari in connection with the Jet Airways money laundering case and cryptocurrency transactions.

The fraudsters said that one of the 347 ATM cards recovered when Jet Airways' Naresh Goyal was arrested belonged to Ushakumari and that Goyal had transferred Rs 2 crore to her account. The housewife was presented in a fake court online, claiming that she had been virtually arrested. A judge and a lawyer appeared there. A witness named Sakshi Agarwal also appeared. The judge said that the money should be deposited in the account they mentioned and that it will be returned if Ushakumari proves that she has no connection with the fraud.

Money was transferred from the bank accounts of Usha Kumari and her husband to the accounts of the accused in 12 installments from July 14 to August 11. 62 lakhs were collected by pledging gold. The fraud came to light when they reached Mattancherry station on Friday after they were informed that the housewife had been cleared from the case and that she would get the clearance certificate from the nearest police station.
Initially, the couple was not ready to accept that it was a fraud. The complaint was filed after senior police officials intervened. A case was registered against the names mentioned by the fraudsters. Sakshi Agarwal, a native of Navi Mumbai, is the first accused. The other accused are Santosh Rao, Vijay Khanna, Sanjay Khan and Siva Subramaniam.