Realtor arrested for cheating NRI

Hyderabad: A realtor from Tirupati was arrested by the White Collar Offences team of Central Crime Station in Hyderabad on Friday, on charges of cheating an NRI of Rs 2 crore. Detective Department Joint Commissioner T Prabhakar Rao in a press note on Friday said that they received a complaint from K Janardhan Chowdary, a citizen of Canada and native of Tirupati, stating that he sold his property to a realtor and he did not receive the money from him. Also, Janardhan was sent fabricated bank receipts by the realtor.

In 2015, complainant Chowdary was introduced to one Sreenath, Managing Director of Money Mantra Properties and Deals Company by his relatives. During their conversations, Chowdary expressed interest to sell the share of his property in present in Tirupati.

After some days, with the help of Sreenath, an agreement was made by his friend M Chandra Shekar Reddy to buy the property for Rs 3.2 crore. Reddy paid Rs 1.2 crore as advance and promised to deposit remaining Rs 2 crore in Sreenath’s company on the name of Chowdary’s sons. Later, Chowdary received a mail from the accused Reddy that the money has been deposited in Sreenath’s company and he also received scanned copies of deposit receipts. Meanwhile, Sreenath also confirmed that he received money.

On believing this, Chowdary asked his sister to register the property on Reddy’s name and the registration was done successfully. To his shock, when Chowdary checked, the money was factually not deposited on his sons’ names and realised about cheating and approached the police.

During investigation, it was found that Reddy who was running out of money to buy the property colluded with Sreenath to cheat Chowdary. The duo prepared forged bank receipts and sent them through email to the complainant in order to cheat him. Subsequently, Reddy (56), a realtor from Tirupati has been arrested and sent to judicial remand, the Joint Commissioner said.