In a significant crackdown on illegal online betting, Cyberabad Cybercrime officials and the Special Operations Team (SOT) arrested five fraudsters linked to a massive bank account racket. The accused, operating from KPHB Colony and Raichur, supplied 120 fake bank accounts to cyber fraudsters, leading to 23 cases nationwide, including one in Khammam.
The arrested individuals—D Naveen Kumar, V Sandeep Kumar, Ch Prudhvi Ramaraju, Ch Pavan Venkata Naga Bharadwaj, and M Ramanjaneyulu—are residents of Andhra Pradesh. Acting on a tip-off, police raided a flat in Lodha Meridian Apartments, KPHB Colony, arresting Naveen and Sandeep, who had opened numerous bank accounts and linked SIM cards, selling them for Rs 10,000 each to a Bengaluru-based operator named Arvesh Kumar. Daily wage workers were paid Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 to open accounts in their names.
Further investigation traced the operation to Raichur, Karnataka, where Prudhvi, Pavan, and Ramanjaneyulu were apprehended. They worked as telecallers at a call center just across the Telangana-Karnataka border, assisting illegal betting portal operators.
According to Cybercrime DCP B Sai Sri, the accused operated under Sathyanarayana Verma, who used Telegram and WhatsApp groups to promote “Dodgebook777,” an online betting platform hosted on the Supago website. Although online betting is banned in Telangana, the accused coordinated this illegal operation for six months. The three call center employees had joined just a month ago, earning Rs 18,000 monthly.
Authorities seized laptops, mobile phones, cheque books, debit cards, and SIM cards from the accused. Bank accounts holding Rs 14 lakh have been frozen. Police are investigating whether banks acted negligently or if accounts were deliberately opened.
A suo motu case has been registered under the BNS and IT Act, and all five accused were produced in court and sent to judicial remand.
