Toll plaza staff arrested for circulating fake notes

Ongole: Prakasam district police arrested two workers of a toll plaza on Thursday for circulating Rs 500 counterfeit notes. The police recovered 17 counterfeit notes of Rs 500 along with a colour printer and other tools used for printing the notes from the youth.

According to the Ongole DSP, Guntupalli Srinivasa Rao, one youth Yallamandala Rajesh, a resident of K Bitragunta village in Jarugumalli mandal is working as a toll collector in the toll plaza of Simhapuri Expressway Limited at Tangutur.

He observed that the long journey drivers from Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and others are always in hurry and rarely check the notes. So he approached his friend Ch Gopi, a photo studio owner and planned to earn more money by counterfeiting money.

They bought a digital scanner and colour printer in Ongole and made fake currency with them. They circulated 14 notes of Rs. 500 counterfeit currency by including them in the change for the toll fees at night shifts to the drivers of cars and lorries from other states.

The Tanguturu police received complaints from three granite lorry drivers about the fake notes circulation at the toll plaza and raided it. They arrested Rajesh and Gopi along with the machinery and recovered 17 fake notes in their possession. The accused said that they started printing the notes on August 4 and circulated nearly Rs 7,000 worth of Rs 500 notes.