Coimbatore: The city police on Saturday busted an online lottery gang and seized Rs 22.67 lakh from the gang members. Police said they were running the online lottery business for few months across the urban and rural areas of the district and collected lakhs of rupees from people.
Based on a tip-off, police arrested three people and seized four laptops, three tabs, a motorcycle and six mobile phones from them. Police said they are trying to collect the details of the people who supported the gang to run the illegal lottery business.
The arrested were identified as B Sanjay Gandhi, 34, his brother-in-law Vinoth, 23, both hailing from Kurichi, and his friend Sivachandran, 29, of Machampalayam village near Sundarapuram.
Preliminary investigations revealed that Sanjay Gandhi was engaged with lottery business in Kerala. As the Tamil Nadu government had banned the sale of lottery tickets, he decided to run three-digit online lottery ticket business in the state.
The trio started the three-number lottery business a few months ago and collected lakhs of rupees from the public. Based on the tip-off, Podanur police inspector JK Gobi and team detained the trio on Saturday night and booked them under a few sections of the Lottery Regulation Act, Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code. They were produced before a judicial magistrate on Sunday night and later they were lodged at the Coimbatore central prison.
According to sources, many gangs are running the three-number illegal lottery business at Ukkadam, Gandhipuram and a few more areas. But the police had failed to crack the racket.
In April 2018, the Podanur police busted an online lottery gang and seized a car, Rs 8.5 lakh and a laptop. They verified the laptop and learned that Rs 18.5 crore worth transactions were made through the lottery business by the gang in Coimbatore for the last one year.