‘Old student’ posing as Customs Officer cheats school teachers

Teachers from reputed city schools pay lakhs of rupees without even verifying claims

Mysore/Mysuru: A man, who posed as a Customs Department Officer and cheated school teachers on the pretext of providing them with seized gold at cheap rates, has been arrested by the Cyber, Economic, and Narcotics Crime (CEN) Police.

He claimed that he was the old student of their school and is presently working as a high-ranking Customs Officer. Police have seized a mobile phone and Rs. 7,48,800 from him. Surprisingly, teachers from some of the reputed schools in Mysuru fell for the trap and before transferring money, they did not even verify the records in the school.

According to the Police, G. Sudeep, alias Sandy, alias Santhosh, a resident of Singahalli near Bengaluru, took the telephone numbers of schools from the internet and called up those numbers and claimed he was the student of 2011 and 2012 batch. He chose to call only the landline numbers and managed to trick the people on the other end with his polished talk.

After exchanging pleasantries regarding the school, his batch and teachers, Sudeep claimed that he was a Customs Officer and sought the phone numbers of teachers who had worked in that schools in the 2011 and 2012 batches.

He could gain easy access to personal mobile numbers of teachers and after gaining their trust with a couple of calls, the accused told them that, as a high-ranking Customs Officer, he could get gold and other products seized by the Customs Department at airports and shipyards at a lesser price.

He called up the landline of many reputed educational institutions and the teachers easily fell for his machinations and paid money without even verifying. He told a few teachers that gold and other valuable articles seized by the Customs Department were available at cheap prices. Trusting him, many teachers paid lakhs of rupees and Sudeep had made them transfer money to accounts of people known to him.

While one teacher blindly transferred Rs. 2,27,000, the others transferred Rs. 2,77,800, Rs. 46,000, Rs. 45,000 and Rs. 58,000. As the goods were not forthcoming from Sudeep as promised by him, teachers smelt a rat and filed complaints.

In all, five cases were reported against him regarding this in Mysuru, Police said. Apart from cheating teachers, he cheated an auto driver of Rs. 95,000 by promising to get a loan.

Santhosh worked as a scanner in Amazon and he was a former employee of Cargo Courier Service. There have also been complaints about him in Bengaluru in Magadi Road, Vijayanagar, Adugodi, HAL and V.V. Puram Police Stations.