Keralite cheats thousands with maid offer, held in city

He duped thousands of families in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Delhi, Rajasthan and even NRIs based in Oman and Kuwait while sitting operating from dingy rooms in Kottayam, Pollachi, Coimbatore and Chennai.

A special police team from Kozhikode arrested Shiva alias B Parameshwaran (37), a native of Ottapalam in Palakkad district, from Pammal in the city where he was running his housemaid services agency about which even his family was unaware of.

Police seized 15 bank passbooks in his name. Police sources said Parameshwaran seemed to have earned several crores through his business as he kept the police at bay by operating several such bogus online service agencies simultaneously.

“We got hold of one of the latest mobile phone numbers used by the accused and with the help of cyber cell police zeroed in on his house at Nehru Street, Sambandhanar Nagar, Pammal. He has been running this racket since 1996 and we are yet to get a clear idea of how many have been duped and how much money he really had made,” a senior police official of the special police team told DT Next.

When police picked him up from his rented house at Pammal, they seized 15 bank passbooks, four mobile phones, 18 SIM cards and ATM cards of various banks. Parameshwaran collected Rs 11,500 as registration fee and advance payment for sending the housemaids to families. He opted to operate only through the internet as he used photographs of several women to woo customers. He contacted the parties using his mobile phone and after collecting the amount, he would change the SIM card. He operated about 20 bank accounts into which all the money sent by his clients was credited,” the official added. 

He also exploited the interests of certain customers who wanted young housemaids to be sent to their houses. “Some customers would instruct him to send photographs of older women to convince their wives but actually want him to send younger maids. For these special services, he charged over Rs 25,000 per customer,” the official added.