Online rummy gang busted, retailer among four held in Vizag

The arrested were identified as Kare Tatha Rao, Koviri Jagannadham and Yejjala Bandayya, all three from Rambilli area in Vizag district and Vakada Janakiram from Pedagantyada area of the city.

DCP (Law and Order) Aishwarya Rastogi said that Tatha Rao is a retailer and the main kingpin in the fraud. Tatha Rao owned a cell phone retail shop and he along with the others have been registering SIM cards by using the confidential KYC details of people.

"Tatha Rao used to collect the KYC documents of the poor people by paying Rs 200 to Rs 300 each. Once the SIM card was registered, he would sell them to people who indulged in playing rummy at a higher price at around Rs. 3,000," he said.

The DCP said the Andhra Pradesh government has banned online rummy. Tata Rao would use a GPS masking App to show that the player was from another state, where the online rummy was not banned.

He along with the other three accused would also play online rummy. The four would join a table of six and would sit together by masking their GPS location and defraud the other by sharing their cards. In the process, they would make Rs 40,000 and Rs 45,000 per month by defrauding other players.

"Since Tatha Rao was a retailer, he had access to Mitra App and using that app he would create an Airtel Payments bank account with the new SIM cards to receive payments from various online rummy sites such as Rummy Culture and Rummy Circle. Since a PAN card is necessary for withdrawing money from online rummy sites, he also collected the PAN cards from selected customers and obtain new cards," he said.

Based on the specific information that Rao used to collect KYC of others by paying Rs 300 to Rs 500, some people had approached the police. Police in return busted the fraud and nabbed the four persons.