CHENNAI: The Mylapore police claim to have solved some 200 cases of theft and cheating over the past nine years with the arrest on Thursday of a 38-year-old man, who mainly targeted the elderly.Police said the accused, Sivakumar, 40, had used the money he stole to lease land in Madurai and grow sugarcane. He had moved to Chennai 12 years ago and lived in Vadapalani.He landed in the police net after he was caught on CCTV cameras at an ATM cheating a senior citizen recently. Police said the elderly man told them that Sivakumar had offered to help him withdraw money from an ATM in Mylapore. He withdrew 3,000 as directed by the senior citizen but then secretly withdrew another 95,000 using the same card.Once the victim complained, police checked the CCTV footage and spotted the man and his bike, which they found had a fake registration number.“We formed a special team to trace the suspect and checked the CCTV footage in the locality and found his vehicle at Vadapalani. We arrested him from his house,” said Senthil Murugan, crime inspector, Mylapore police station.During interrogation, police claimed, Sivakumar revealed that he was involved in more than 200 such cases across the city. He would target only senior citizens, robbing them by diverting their attention, said the officer.In one case, he befriended an elderly man and used him as cover to steal from a cellphone shop. He took the elderly man along to the shop and told the owner he was his father and that they had come to buy mobile phones. He picked up three phones and told the shopkeeper he would return with the money while his father stayed at the shop. He then told the unsuspecting senior citizen that he would be back in a jiffy and left. It was only when there was no sign of Sivakumar after more than half an hour that the shopkeepr grew suspicious and checked with the elderly man.Police recovered three cell phones and Rs one lakh in cash from Sivakumar

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