Mumbai Crime: Diners Club scam mastermind an IIT dropout first arrested at 19

Ashish Ravindranathan’s arrested accomplices who are highly educated

The Mumbai Cyber Police, who are investigating the Diners Club scam case, have issued a lookout circular for its alleged mastermind, Ashish Ravindranathan, a resident of Ahmedabad. The cops have found that he is a habitual offender and the first cyber crime case against him, credit card fraud, was registered in 2009 while he was studying at IIT Gandhinagar.

He was also later arrested by the CBI in a similar cyber fraud case where he scammed victims of several lakhs after offering them American Express cards. According to the cyber police, Ashish was arrested at the age of 19 by the Ahmedabad police in 2009 for duping several people of more than R10 lakh in total while posing as credit card marketing executives.

As per the preliminary investigation, it appears that he did this to fund a trip to the US. After he got arrested by local cops that year, R1.30 lakh was recovered from him. The cyber police have also found that after he walked out on bail a few months after his arrest, he again started duping people using different methods; in 2011-12, he started calling his victims to offer them American Express cards.

On Tuesday, a press conference was held at the cyber police station in BKC to announce the arrest of five accused

"At the time, cyber fraud was new and a lot of people started falling prey to it. Here, he cheated people of crores; the gravity of the scam was huge at the time, and several rich people were duped by him. One such case got transferred to the CBI, and the federal agency arrested him," an officer said.

Sources have also said that every time, Ashish would use a different modus operandi. For the Diners Club scam, he again targeted the rich, but this time he assembled a well-educated team of fraudsters who were fluent in English to make an impact.

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Officials have also said that in the American Express card scam case, the culprits would send apologetic messages to their victims as they believed the people were wealthy and would not file a complaint against them. Every victim of the Diners Club scam received similar messages.

On Tuesday, Balsing Rajput, DCP (Cyber) held a press conference at the cyber police station in Bandra Kurla Complex to announce the arrest of five accused. They are MBA, mechanical engineering, hotel management and computer science graduates.

"The scamsters are advancing and targeting different sets of citizens. The racketeers were eyeing people from a high-income group. We urge citizens not to get trapped into free privilege cards and memberships of clubs and if they have been cheated, please come forward and register a complaint with the cyber police," Rajput had said.

Mayappan Murugsen, a close associate of the accused, used to make payments to purchase gold from Tanishq and electronic items from Reliance Digital and Croma and later sell the same in the market. With the cash he received, he deposited it into in his account, and later the money was transferred to Ashish.

The police have found that so far there are 35 to 40 victims in Mumbai, Thane, and Navi Mumbai in the latest scam, and the accused had accumulated around R10-15 crore. "We suspect that he is involved in more cyber fraud, but since he is absconding, we cannot reveal further details," an officer privy to the investigation has said.

The police have conducted a massive search in Ahmedabad and also interrogated Ashish's family members and his wife but have found that he had not come home for the past six months. However, he had been sending money to his family at regular intervals from different parts of the country. The cops have found that most of the money he earned has been converted into cryptocurrency, and in one such case, they managed to block around Rs 60 lakh.

2011
Year American Express card scam began