Beware! Fraudsters in Seemandhra are on rise to cash in on the “popularity” of severe cyclonic storm Hudhud that lashed out four districts of North Coastal Andhra Pradesh fortnight ago. While the natural calamity left a swathe of devastation and city like Vizag hasn’t completely recovered from it yet, a bunch of alleged fraudsters have stepped into action to cash in on its popularity and sympathy. And no their target is not common man. They have directly aimed at NGOs and trying to dupe them by luring them “money”.

One named Vasudev Reddy is said to be posing as board member of Relief Fund Committee constituted by government of Andhra Pradesh and demanding a sum of Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000. He is duping NGOs that he would transfer funds worth lakh of rupees from Relief Fund A/c to NGO’s Bank A/c within just three hours. He claims that if one NGO deposits Rs 25,000 he would transfer Rs 10 Lakh to their bank account towards “relief measures”. This is not all. Vasu himself suggests NGO to spend half of the fund amount for people, take pictures of “relief measure activities” and bribe an auditor to make a “fake” report for the money spent for people.  Suspected with his claims, NGO has approached a news channel.

This incident was unearthed through ABN news channel’s sting operation. After further investigation it was revealed that the bank account details shared by ‘fraudster’ Vasudev Reddy belongs to Kadapa. Meanwhile, police case is yet to be registered against the accused as NGO is not sure whether it comes under normal crime or a cyber crime. So, beware there are ‘fraudsters’ who are there to even cash in on Hudhud popularity.