Senior citizen arrested in cyber fraud

Mangaldas Patel (65), who works as a lecturer at a private college here, was arrested on Saturday night by Rajkot police and would be handed over to the Mumbai crime branch officials.

Patel`s daughter, Priyanka, lives in Mumbai where she runs an export-import business. Allegedly, she, alongwith two of her friends, identified as Raju and a Nigerian national Sherin George, hacked email address of a Mumbai-based diamond firm.

The firm was to receive Rs 20 lakh from a New York firm. The trio learnt about it after hacking the account, and managed to get the money deposited in Priyanka`s account in a Rajkot bank, police said.

As the account was operated by her father, the Rajkot police arrested Mangaldas on Saturday night. Mangaldas had withdrawn Rs three lakh of the deposited amount, of which Rs 1.5 lakh were transffered to persons in Mizoram, police said. "We have informed the Mumbai crime branch officials and a team led by police inspector Sunil Ghosalkar will come and take the professor into custody this evening," a senior police official said.