VIJAYAWADA: In a significant development in the fake RTA website case, Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department (CID) arrested the prime accused in Mumbai on Friday and initiated a manhunt to nab two of his accomplices.In their investigation, CID police found out that Reynold Richard Reddy (38) was the main culprit who operated the counterfeit Regional Transport Authority (RTA) website, under the domain name www.rtoonline.com, from Mumbai with the help of two others.
According to CID officials, the cyber fraudster, owner of Navi Mumbai-based Trinity Enterprises, had purchased the domain from web hosting company GoDaddy in June, 2018. In order to draw public attention, he designed it in such a way that the website looked similar to that of the official RTA website.
To attract more visitors, Richard Reddy paid charges for search engine optimisation to Google and claimed to have started offering services such as issuance of driving licenses, registration of new vehicles and re-registration of the used ones.
This incident first came to the notice of Visakhapatnam RTA authorities last December after 10 people approached regional deputy transport commissioner (DTC) S Venkateswara Rao and said they had not received any acknowledgment for the payments they made for new licences.
“From October, 2018 till the date when the case was registered, more than 32,000 people had logged in to the website and many of them paid `256 each as fees towards the required services. However, the victims, after enquiring with RTA authorities, realised that the domain was fake,” CID officials said.
Following the information, DTC-IT M Purendra lodged a complaint with CID and a case was registered. “So far, the role of three has been established in the case with the help of leads received from GoDaddy and other service providers. From Richard Reddy, we recovered a laptop and a mobile phone that were used for browsing the website.”In this regard, CID and RTA authorities advised internet users to verify the authenticity of a website before availing any service.