Andhra engineer held for trying to dupe MLA by posing as Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot

ALWAR: A 28-year-old computer engineer involved in cheating several politicians was arrested from Visakhapatnam for allegedly trying to bilk Rs 30,000 from Tijara MLA by posing as chief minister Ashok Gehlot on WhatsApp.
The Bhiwadi police said that accused Pandiri Vishnu Murthy posed as Rajasthan CM to chat on WhatsApp with the Tijara MLA, Sandeep Kumar on April 24. The account's profile had a photo of CM Gehlot to trick Kumar.
During the short chat, the accused asked Kumar to send Rs 30,000 on a different mobile number through online money transfer apps. He also made a phone call from a different number which evoked the MLA's suspicion. Kumar contacted an official at the chief minister's office (CMO) in Jaipur which further confirmed his suspicion of someone trying to cheat him.
The MLA then alerted the Bhiwadi police about the same on April 26. An FIR was registered in the case and the police constituted a special team to track the scammer.
The police team learned that the IP address of the virtual WhatsApp number was located in Singapore because the accused had used a VPN service to hide his location. Through technical analysis, the team then began searching for the phone number that the accused had sent to the MLA for sending money.
Subsequently, two teams were sent to Visakhapatnam. They moved around the RH Colony in Pedagantyada there and reached the house of one Sandhya Singh, the user of the mobile number.
Police spoke to the woman and her husband, Shiva, but they declined to have any information about the case. Shiva, however, told them that his friend Sagar had recently asked for the phone number, which was connected with the online payment transfer app.
Police sought the location of Shiva's friend, who was identified as the accused, with the real name Pandiri Vishnu Murthy.
His mobile phone was searched and policediscovered important evidence. Murthy was taken to Gajuwaka police station where he confessed to the cyber fraud.
During the interrogation, police learnt that in 2019, he had duped Rs 1.80 crore from two ministers and three MLAs of Andhra Pradesh by posing as Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Mohan Reddy.
As per Bhiwadi police, the accused cheated people to splurge the money on his girlfriend's expensive lifestyle.
Murthy has completed engineering in computer science and is skilled at hacking computers and mobile phones. He is also well-versed in using VPN servers to mask his location and IP address.