Mangaluru: In a significant breakthrough, the CEN crime police of Mangaluru City arrested a man running an elaborate online scam, duping people on the pretext of selling cars via OLX.The accused, Ravichandra Manjunath Revankar, 29, from Banavasi in Uttara Kannada district, was taken into custody from Hospete, by the CEN police team which was engaged in another operation near Hospete.According to DCP (law and order) Siddharth Goyal, the arrest followed a complaint filed on Saturday, in which a victim alleged being cheated of Rs 2.5 lakh by Ravichandra, who posed as a car seller on OLX. A case was registered under section 66(C) and 66(D) of the IT Act and Sections 318 (4), 3 (5), and 112 of the BNS.Preliminary investigations revealed that Ravichandra created a well-oiled operation with 21 bank accounts eight sim cards and over 80 cyber fraud complaints linked to his phone numbers. For the past three years, he systematically cheated unsuspecting buyers, posing as a genuine car seller, collecting advances, and then vanishing without a trace. To avoid detection, he used mobile phones temporarily, and then sold them off, switching sim cards to cover his tracks, the DCP said. The accused was produced before the court on Sunday.
