Father-son duo along with friend dupes Telugu students in US, Canada by offering to pay their semester fees

A Hyderabad-based businessman, along with his son and friend, both studying in the US, has been arrested for pulling off a con job in the US, officials said Tuesday.

The Hyderabad police said that the trio duped as many as 32 Telugu students in the US and Canada to the tune of Rs 2.7 crore by offering to pay their semester fee using credit cards after collecting the fee amounts from their parents back home.

The police identified the arrested accused as Deverashetty Gautham, 22, a student in Canada, his father Deverashetty Pedda Venkateshwarlu, 55, and Gautham’s friend Kohirkar Nitesh, 24.

This hawala operation through a Dubai-based dealer, however, did not go through as payments through cloned international credit cards were rejected by universities upon intimation from banks and the students were forced to pay the



semester fees again if they wished to continue their education.

Based on a complaint from the victims, the police started an investigation into the fraud.

According to Joint Commissioner Gajarao Bhupal, Gautham collected the details of students pursuing their master’s in the US and Canada and convinced them to pay their semester fee with an offer of a 10 per cent discount if their parents transferred the money to his father’s bank account in Hyderabad.

Gautham, along with his friend Nitesh, shared all details of such students with one Zibron in Dubai, who then paid the universities using cloned international credit cards. These payments were however rejected by universities. The joint commissioner said that the students had to pay the fee once again despite depositing the money in the bank account of Gautham’s father.