CHENNAI: As many as 84 families, hailing from poor financial background, were cheated of Rs 2.56 crore by a group of scamsters by promising them houses in the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB) apartments in Teynampet.
The Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Greater Chennai Police that is probing the case arrested eight persons in this regard last month.
Four of the arrested have been identified as Balasubramanian, Mahesh, Leo, Esakkimuthu and Kabali Nadhan. A case has been registered under sections for forgery and cheating against them. The police also seized Rs 1 crore deposited in the bank account of the wife of one of the suspects. Sources said the allotment orders issued to the people bore a fake government stamp, and the scamsters even introduced the victims to a fake ‘government official’ to gain their trust.
The investigation began around a month ago when the TNUHDB executive engineer of Teynampet filed a complaint based on petitions of cheating in allotment of houses in the TNUHDB flats in Valleswaran Thottam, where 627 tokens for allotment had been issued by the board.
In August 2024, two women - Lakshmi and Jayasakthi - approached TNUHDB’s office with a complaint that the house numbers issued to them in the allotment orders had already been occupied by someone else. For instance, Lakshmi complained that B-41 allotted to her was occupied by one Subramaniam, while B-73 given to Jayasakthi was occupied by the family of Devi Arumugam.
When the TNUHDB officer asked them the name of the officer who issued the allotment order, they revealed that it was Balu alias Balasubramanian of Villivakkam, who had called and promised them houses in exchange of a payment of Rs 3.5 lakh. The investigation found that the allotment letters given to them were fake.
CCB’s investigators said the ‘agents’ deployed by the kingpin had collected Rs 3.5 lakh-Rs 4 lakh per person by promising them the allotment letters, which later turned out to be fake. The agents were paid a commission of Rs 25,000- Rs 50,000 per person that they managed to con, sources added.