104 white-collar criminals caught in 3 months

CHENNAI: Chennai city seems to be becoming the operational hub for white collar crime, with Central Crime Branch (CCB) statistics showing a phenomenal increase in cases. In the last three months alone, CCB sleuths have arrested as many as 104 whitecollar criminals who were involved in cheating people of more than Rs 28 crore. The nature of such crimes has become so sophisticated that 53 of the arrested were involved in intellectual property rights violations, which include video piracy, Corporate Act violations and illegal copying of patented products and designs. Twenty-four others were cheats who have been booked under several sections, including Sec 420 of the IPC. "The large number of arrests does not mean there is a spurt in white-collar crimes. It is just that we have decided to effect immediate arrests in such cases and come down heavily on white-collar criminals," deputy commissioner of police (CCB) C Sridhar told The Times Of India. Recently, city commissioner of police T Rajendran had an interesting observation to make about white collar crime. According to him, a number of white-collar criminals are women. "If we arrest 10 such criminals, about four of them happen to be women," the commissioner said. He highlighted the case of M Meera Shaki, a 22-year-old woman who had cheated many people to the tune of several lakhs after offering them huge loans from projects in the US. There are three separate cases slapped against her. Similar is the case of Sundari Iyer (57) and J Sathee (50), who cheated people after offering loans from a French trust and from NRIs. Then there is Dr Vijayakumar, a bogus Ayurvedic practitioner who had amassed over Rs 2 crore from patients. There are as many as 200 complaints against him so far and they are still coming. Police arrested him after a woman found her son's condition deteriorating after treatment in his clinic, Tiruvithangur Raja Vaidyasala. Among the 104 arrested in the last three months, 16 are land grabbers, three cyber crime accused, six bank fraudsters and two usurers. In cases where CCB manages to remand the accused, they are usually able to recover around 40% of the amount that was obtained by cheating. "In most of the cases, they spend the money they make and may not have any way to repay it to the victims when we arrest them," a CCB official said.