Small time actor and wife held for cheating in Hyderabad

A small time film actor cheated people on the pretext of giving a role in promotional advertisements and collected huge money from them

Hyderabad: A small time film actor who allegedly cheated people on the pretext of giving a role in promotional advertisements and collected huge money from them was arrested by the Cyberabad police on Monday.

The arrested persons, who were identified as Apurva Ashwin Dawda alias Armaan Arjun Kapoor of Pune, and his wife Natasha Kapoor alias Nazish Memon of Maharashtra, had cheated a couple of Rs 14.12 lakh on the pretext of providing a role to their daughter in a promotional advertisement of a biscuit company, said DCP (Crimes) Cyberabad, Kalmeshwar Shingeswar.

During the month of December, the victim’s family had gone to a shopping mall at Kondapur where Memon introduced herself as a person representing a ‘cosmopolitan modelling agency’ and enquired if they were interested in modelling role for a television commercial for their daughter. She convinced them saying they are in the mall to select children for modelling in television advertisements and photo shoot for business promotions of various products and services, and selected candidates will get to act alongside with noted actors and actresses.

“To make the victims believe, the fraudsters conducted a ramp show at the mall and told them that their daughter is selected for shoot of a promotion advertisement of a prominent biscuit company. Initially, they told them to transfer Rs 3.25 lakh refundable caution deposit. Again, on the pretext of a photo shoot collected a Rs 10.87 lakh from them,” said the official.

Ashwin had acted in a few Bollywood movies and married Memon after developing friendship with her. After learning through various similar scams both of them together started cheating people to earn money easily. The duo used Whatsapp to contact the victims and asked them to transfer to some accounts of traders based in Rajasthan.

To make people believe they created a website created and were maintaining it well. Previously, he was arrested by the Mumbai police in similar cases. Four cases are registered against him in Cyberabad.

The police seized Rs 15.60 lakh from him, along with four mobile phones and a laptop.