Cybercriminal impersonates actor Priyanka Upendra, cons her son and 2 friends off Rs 1.65 lakh; arrested

The actor got a call asking her to dial a number and receive an OTP, following which she realised she lost access to her WhatsApp account, and two of her friends and her son had sent Rs 55,000 each, totalling Rs 1.65 lakh, to the impersonator.

A cybercriminal from Bihar was arrested for illegally accessing actor Priyanka Upendra’s WhatsApp account and cheating two of her friends and her son of a total of Rs 1.65 lakh by impersonating her, the police said on Wednesday.

The arrested is Vikas, 30, who hails from Bihar's Nalanda.

On September 15, Priyanka Upendra, the wife of popular Kannada actor Upendra Rao, filed a complaint with the Sadashivanagar police that an unknown person called her, pretending to be a customer service executive, and made her dial *21*9279295167# on her phone to receive an OTP.

She then realised she lost access to her WhatsApp account, and two of her friends and her son had sent Rs 55,000 each, totalling Rs 1.65 lakh, to the impersonator.

“It was a coincidence that I received a call where the person claimed that some of the household goods I had ordered were due for delivery. I had actually ordered these items from an app, so I believed the call. My contacts received messages from my WhatsApp number asking for Rs 55,000 by stressing some urgency. Some, including my son, have even transferred it,” she said previously.

Sadashivanagar police sought technical assistance from the Central Cybercrime Police. A special team was formed under Manoj Kumar, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Central Cybercrime Police Station.

The team unravelled the digital trail and zeroed in on Vikas. A team was dispatched to Nalanda to nab him. Vikas got wind of it and escaped to Delhi.

The team was further dispatched to Delhi, and on November 6, Vikas was arrested in Sonia Nagar. He was brought to Bengaluru on a transit remand and during interrogation confessed to having committed the offence with his accomplices, who remain at large. “It was a call forwarding scam. The suspect made the victim enter the code on her phone, leading him to receive her OTPs. He used it to log in to the victim’s WhatsApp account and impersonate her,” a senior police officer told DH.

Bihar's Nalanda the new 'Jamtara'?

The team of investigators learnt that in Bihar's Nalanda, there was a well-oiled operation of over 100 people, especially young men, scamming the gullible.

“This is similar to what was uncovered in the infamous Jamtara in Jharkhand a few years ago. There are many villages in northern India, where such operations exist,” a police officer, who was part of the probe team, told DH.