Woman and her friend who extorted Rs 5 lakh by pretending to be geologists arrested

KOLLAM: A young woman and her friend were arrested for extorting five lakh rupees from a quarry owner in Kollam by pretending to be a geologist. Neyyattinkara Anavoor native PR Rahul (31) and Kozhikode Chelavoor native Neetu S Paul (34) were caught by the Kollam Cyber ​​Police.

The accused committed the fraud in the name of a former woman district geologist in Kollam using a SIM card arranged with someone else's address. Rahul created a fake WhatsApp account using the image of a geologist and chatted with the quarry owner pretending to be a geologist. He promised to renew the quarry license and asked for a bribe of five lakh rupees. On last December 30, Neetu was taken to Kottiyam in a taxi after being informed that a woman would be sent in a car to collect the money. The money was collected from the quarry owner after that. After this, the mobile phone number was deactivated. With this, the quarry owner called the real geologist and said that he had transferred the money to renew the license. The scam came out when the geologist denied it. Immediately the quarry owner filed a complaint with the Kollam City Cyber ​​Police and the geologist also lodged a similar complaint.

The accused were arrested by a team consisting of Inspector A Jayakumar, Inspector A Abdul Manaf, Sub-Inspector Ajith Kumar, Assistant Sub-Inspector Niaz, and Senior CPO Gayatri Chandran under the supervision of District Crime Branch Assistant Commissioner Zakaria Mathew.

Fake SIM card ruined the scam

Rahul bought the second-hand phone from a shop in Beemapally. Later he approached a person in the medical college premises and asked him to take a SIM card for him as his mother was in the hospital and he lost his phone and did not have any other documents. The fraud was done using the SIM card taken in this person's name. The suspects were caught following other calls from this phone number, IP addresses and the car used to travel. Neetu, who was separated from her husband, met Rahul through social media. Both of them were staying together in Kozhikode.