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Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 12
The Squad-I of Crime Branch, Sector-14 Rohini has busted a gang of cheats who duped banks by obtaining loans from two branches of the HDFC Bank on fake documents and vanished afterwards. The two cases were registered at Sabzi Mandi and Barakhamba Road police stations. The amount cheated by the gang was about Rs 82 lakh, said police.
Three persons — Sarvan Kumar (27), resident of Prahalad Vihar, Manish Tiwari (30), resident of Mohan Garden and Mohit Kumar (38), resident of Baljit Nagar — have been apprehended. Hundreds of forged KYC documents and details of numerous bank accounts have been recovered from them, police said.
Bank officials noticed that 14 bank accounts had been opened under different names but all the accounts had the same applicant’s photograph. The cheats had managed to generate a fake trail of transactions within these bank accounts and then had applied for credit cards. They had also applied for personal loans and after obtaining the loans, the applicant had vanished. The KYC details were found to be fake. The contact numbers were all shut down, said Rajiv Ranjan, Additional Commissioner of Police (crime).
In the Sabzi Mandi case, Rs 62 lakh had been taken. The same gang managed to open seven bank accounts in HDFC Bank at Barakhamba Road and took away Rs 20 lakh, he said.
During investigation, Crime Branch received information about the gang operating from Baljit Nagar here. A trap was laid near Patel Nagar Metro Station and two persons - Sarvan and Tiwari - were apprehended. At their instance, the third gang member Mohit was also apprehended, he said.
Total 22 PAN cards, nine Aadhar cards, 21 voter cards, four driving licenses and 38 debit and credit cards, 15 mobiles, multiple photographs and registers containing over 100 bank account details (opened on forged documents), a swipe machine, a laptop, blank application forms and a motorcycle were recovered, he said.
They disclosed that two persons — Dr Mehboob, resident of Batla House, and Abhishek, resident of Hajipur (Bihar) were the brains behind the racket. These two supplied the forged documents that were used by the gang members. After opening several banks accounts, the gang used to maintain balances by rotating cash from one account to another and would often retain the accounts for almost a year to generate faith of the bank and good history. When they became eligible for various cards and loan offers from the banks, they used to apply for them through net banking. Most of these loans were preapproved, applied through online route, as per the bank policies and RBI guidelines, as no KYC documents are demanded at the time of loan sanction. After obtaining the loan they vanished, he said.
The arrested accused persons have admitted to have cheated Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, State Bank of India, RBL, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda and other banks. Once they succeeded in getting a credit card from a bank, other banks also provided them their credit cards on ‘Card for Card Scheme’. The total cheated amount could be much more. Efforts are being made to arrest the remaining gang members and to determine the quantum of cheating done by the gang, he added.
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