Punjab Police Cyber Crime Cell on Thursday claimed to have busted a hi-tech multi-crore Bank fraud racket operating across the state. The fraudster siphoned off the account money in 5 Bank accounts opened on fake identities and later on withdrew the cash through ATMs and self cheques.
A spokesperson of Bureau of Investigation said that Vijay Kumar, Location Manager Investigation, Risk Intelligence and Control Unit, HDFC Bank submitted an application on alleging a fraud of around Rs. 2 crore from a bank account of the HDFC Bank in a tech savvy manner.
The modus operandi was that the fraudsters shrewdly changed the Email IDs and Mobile Numbers registered with the bank account of the victim to identical mobile numbers and email Id thereby updating their own mobile number and e-mail id in the targeted account hence becoming the virtual controllers of that account.
During the course of investigation, it was found that all the Government ID Proofs including Chip based Driving Licenses, PAN Cards, Hologram containing Voter ID Cards, etc. provided as KYC documents for opening the Bank accounts and for obtaining Mobile Numbers were found to be fake and fabricated.
The spokesman said all the money withdrawals were done by the fraudsters through ATM cards and cheques thereby leaving no trail for the Police to follow. Moreover, the Mobile used were made functional only during the operation and remained non-accessible thereafter.
During the course of investigation, it was found that the racket was operating from Ludhiana and consisted of at least 3 persons. One of the gang members was identified as Rajeev Kumar of New Shimlapauri, Ludhiana.
The spokesman said on the basis of the physical verification and emerging details, 3 accused were nominated in this Case and out of them, two accused namely Rajeev Kumar and Deepak Kumar Gupta of Shimlapuri were arrested from Ludhiana. However one accused managed to escape.
The spokesman said that from the arrested accused, Rs. ten lakh which was deposited in their own accounts have been recovered and more recoveries will be affected soon.
