Impostor takes two film producers for a ride

A fraudster tricked Telugu film producers C. Kalyan and S. Ramesh, into buying his flight tickets to Mumbai and footing his hotel bill, posing as a Directorate of Revenue Intelligence officer.

The two film producers are facing criminal cases of duping some financiers and using factionist Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy alias Suri's killer Bhanu Kiran to settle financial disputes.

The accused, K.V. Ratna Reddy, 36, who allegedly duped them, was caught on Monday by the Commissioner's Task Force sleuths.

An i20 car, a laptop and some fake documents were seized from him, the Task Force DCP, Ch. Ramchander, said.

Reddy, hailing from Guntur, was earlier arrested twice by the police for allegedly cheating people claiming to be an Indian Revenue Service officer.

Fresh plot

After coming out on bail, the accused hatched a fresh plot to dupe the producers on learning that they were facing criminal cases.

A fortnight ago, he rang up C. Kalyan introducing himself as the DRI's Additional Commissioner in Hyderabad.

“I am investigating financial fraud cases involving you and S. Ramesh. You pay me around Rs. 10 lakh if you want to escape from the DRI scanner,” he reportedly told them. The trickster, along with two of his associates, met the two producers at Westin hotel.

He introduced one of his accomplices as a DRI auditor from Mumbai and the second one as the son-in-law of a High Court judge.

The accused made C. Kalyan buy flight ticket to and fro Mumbai for the ‘DRI auditor' and pay huge food and liquor bill at Westin hotel.

To win the confidence of C. Kalyan, he created a fake declaration of investigation letter in the name of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and gave a copy of it to the producer.