Gangster’s son cheated in job con

The 23-year-old son of a gangster who was killed in an encounter in 2003, was cheated of ₹6 lakh by online frauds who promised him a work-from-home job. His father, Suresh Manchekar, was part of the Guru Satam gang and had around 30 cases of murder and extortion registered against him.

According to the Mulund police, gangster's son, a post-graduate student, lives in Mulund with his mother. “On January 15, when he was looking for a part-time, work-from-home job online, a woman sent him a WhatsApp message, saying she was from a company called IPG Global Advertising and Marketing Services and added that if he invested in their advertisements, he would get two to four per cent returns immediately,” said a police officer from Mulund police station.

The woman even shared some fake certificates with him, showing that the company had ‘International Organisation for Standardization’ (ISO) certification. “He was then asked to download the IPG group’s mobile app,” said the police officer. “When he invested ₹200, he would get ₹10 daily; when he invested ₹800, they started sending him ₹42 daily. He could even withdraw the money from the app and transfer it to his bank account. The company kept persuading him to invest larger amounts.”

He then invested ₹5.93 lakh, whereupon the app showed that he was getting returns of ₹40,000 daily. “When the balance had reached ₹1.93 lakh, he decided to withdraw it,” said the officer. “However, he was told that because of bank holidays, he could not right then. Later, the app stopped working. When he realised he had been cheated, he approached us.”

The police have registered a case against unknown persons for cheating, cheating by impersonation and under the Information Technology Act. We have written to banks and cell companies to get details of the accused. The cheating happened from January 15 to April 1,” said the police officer.

His father Suresh Manchekar, one of the most wanted gangsters in Thane, was killed in an encounter in Kolhapur in August 2003. A school dropout, he entered the underworld in 1982. Initially, he was a petty criminal in Nagpada but rose in the crime ranks after joining the Guru Satam gang and extorting money from builders and traders in Kalachowkie, Byculla and Nagpada.