A 26-year-old man from Sooriyawewa has been arrested over an alleged fraud in which someone who made contact through Telegram promised money could be earned from online businesses, police say. Of an alleged total of Rs 1,357,220, the sum of Rs 151,000 was paid into the arrested man’s bank account.
The arrest was made on Tuesday 20 October by officers of the North Western Province Unit of the Computer Crime Investigation Division, which is also conducting the continuing inquiry.
What police describe
Investigations began on a complaint to the division’s North Western unit. According to the complaint, a person who made contact through the Telegram messaging app said money could be earned through online businesses, and money was obtained by fraud.
The suspect was arrested on allegations of involvement in the fraud and of aiding and abetting it — two allegations, reported in both filings, rather than one.
He is described only as a 26-year-old resident of the Sooriyawewa area. Neither filing names him, names the complainant, says how many people lost money, or reports whether he has been produced in court.
The money, and what the split suggests
The two published figures are worth setting against each other.
| Figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Alleged fraud in the complaint | Rs 1,357,220 |
| Credited to the arrested man’s account | Rs 151,000 |
The sum that reached this suspect’s account is about 11 per cent of the alleged total. That, together with the aiding-and-abetting allegation and the fact that the approach was made by “a person” contacted through Telegram, is consistent with the account holder being one link in the chain rather than the originator of the scheme.
This desk is not asserting that. No filing says who received the remaining Rs 1.2 million, whether anyone else is being sought, or whether the person who made contact on Telegram has been identified. The point is only that the published arithmetic leaves the larger part of the money unaccounted for in both reports.
A discrepancy inside one filing
Hiru’s report gives the total in digits as Rs 1,357,220 and then spells it out in Sinhala in the same sentence as එක්කෝටි තිස්පන්ලක්ෂ හත්දහස් දෙසිය විස්සක් — one crore, thirty-five lakh, seven thousand two hundred and twenty, or Rs 13,507,220. The two renderings differ by a factor of about ten.
The digits are the correct figure. Newswire, reporting the same police statement independently, gives the total as Rs 1,357,220, and the Rs 151,000 sub-figure is rendered consistently in both digits and words in Hiru’s own text. The spelled-out form appears to be a transcription error in the Sinhala filing.
Three different cases, close together
Searches for this story return at least two other recent Sri Lankan “online scam” arrests that are not this case, and they are easy to merge by mistake:
- An arrest over an alleged Rs 12.69 million online investment scam, involving a 36-year-old, also handled by the Computer Crime Investigation Division’s North Western Province unit.
- A separate report of a young man arrested over an online financial scam in which a victim was defrauded of Rs 4.3 million.
Same unit, same province in one instance, same scheme type and near-identical headlines — different suspects and different sums. Neither has been used here, and neither is connected to this arrest by any filing.
On sourcing
This account rests on one verified newsroom, Hiru News, with Newswire cited as additional reporting; Newswire is an aggregator and does not count toward this site’s credibility rating, though its independent rendering is what settled the figure above.
Ada Derana has also filed on this arrest, under the headline “Youth arrested over Rs. 151,000 online business scam” at /news/250292, but adaderana.lk has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than thirty consecutive days, so no publication date could be extracted and it could not be cited under this site’s sourcing rules. No other verified newsroom had filed on this case when this article was written.
This desk has covered the CID’s arrest over a WhatsApp-based SriLankan Airlines brand fraud and a public warning over Ponzi-type investment schemes.
