Scammers who duped expatriate workers arrested

Senior DIG Deshabandu Tennakoon inspecting the documents and equipment taken into custody from the scammers and the illegal Kachcheri.

Text and pix by PRIYAN DE SILVA

Acting on a complaint the Kirulapone police cracked a large scale scam, where the perpetrators duped Lankan expatriate workers into revealing details of their remittances after assuring them of being granted a loan under the Enterprise Sri Lanka loan scheme.

Senior DIG Deshabandu Tennakoon, who visited the Kirulapone police station, to congratulate the police team who had made the breakthrough, said that the scammers had swindled millions of rupees.

Police were able to trace the culprits by tracing the owner of a mobile number used by one member of the gang and apprehended three persons, who are residents of Pitabeddara. The police also took into custody the mobile phones and computers used by the culprits and two vehicles.

On information elicited from the suspects the police raided an illegal kachcheri in Wellampitiya, where forged driving licences and identities had been produced.

The scammers had placed advertisement on social media announcing that expatriate workers would be granted loans under the former government’s ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ loan scheme.

Once inquiries were made and the initial application was received the scammers informed the applicants that their applications had been approved and requested them to open a Payfast account and transfer ten percent of the loan approved to the account or remit an equivalent sum through Western Union money transfer and got the victims to reveal their PINs.

The scammers obtained forged identities mostly driving licences through a contact operating near the RMV while the documents were made in Wellampitiya. The police arrested one of the two persons who had operated the illegal kachcheri and took into custody computers, printers and over 900 blank driving licence cards.

The Police requested all those who had fallen prey to the scammers to contact the OIC of the Kirulapone Police station on 071-8591582