Mumbai: The south region cyber police arrested a 40-year-old man from his New Delhi residence for his alleged role in cheating a 72-year-old south Mumbai share trader of Rs 2.2 crore. Police said wanted accused in the case contacted the victim in April 2024, offered him his father’s pending Rs 1.68 lakh provident fund, and asked him to pay Rs 30,000 as the processing fee. Believing them to be genuine PF executives, he ended up losing Rs 2.2 crore.A team supervised by DCP (Cyber) Purushottam Karad and led by senior inspector Nandkumar Gopale began the probe after an FIR was registered on April 18. “We have arrested Umashankar Agarwal from New Delhi. He provided his four bank accounts to the wanted accused, and a total of Rs 23.1 lakh was deposited in these accounts. The money deposited actually belonged to the victim. The accused assured Agarwal a 2% commission on each transaction. So far, we have frozen around 50 bank accounts connected to this case,” said Bhoye.Police said that Agarwal rented his accounts to a wanted accused, Rajesh Sharma. It was Sharma who asked Aggarwal to open the accounts, and kept the bank kits (debit card, passbook, and cheque book) with him.“In April 2024, the complainant, who lives in Nana Chowk, received a phone call from a woman, who identified herself as Ritika Sharma. She told him that his father’s PF amount was pending with them and if he wanted to claim it, he would have to pay Rs 30,000 as the processing fee. The septuagenarian paid the amount. Later, for the next year, citing some reason or the other, the wanted accused kept demanding money from him, and he ended up sending over Rs 2.2 crore in 48 transactions,” said a police officer.
