Five arrested for forging Govt IDs of 95 celebrities to dupe banks of over Rs 90 lakh

Five accused have been arrested for forging the Govt IDs of 95 celebrities and eminent citizens to dupe banks of over Rs 90 lakh, said Delhi Police on Friday.

"Arrested accused forged Govt IDs of 95 celebrities. The loophole is in the documentation and backend verification which needs to be upgraded. All accused have good IT knowledge," said Chhayya Sharma, Joint CP, Eastern Range.

The police said the accused have been identified as Puneet, Md Asif, Sunil Kumar, Vishwa Bhaskar Sharma, and Pankaj Mishra.

Explaining the modus operandi, the police said, "A complaint was lodged by Prem Shekhawat, authorised representative of FPL Technologies Private Limited, a Pune-based company having One Card project. This company provides contactless metal credit cards and virtual cards."

"A case was registered wherein it was alleged that a few people have cheated their company to the tune of Rs. 21,32,572.85 by creating fake Pan Card and Aadhaar cards of celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar, Alia Bhatt, Abhishek Bachchan, Himesh Reshamiya and getting credit card issued from their company," the police added.

During the investigation, it was revealed that the accused got GST details of these celebrities from Google. The first two digits of GSTIN are the state code and the next 10 digits are the PAN number, said the police.

The date of birth of these celebrities is easily available on Google thus the accused got two important PAN details, like PAN and date of birth.

"Similarly, they followed the same process to forge the Aadhaar details. And after getting new PAN and Aaddhar, the fraudsters applied for new credit cards from Pune-based fintech startup 'One Card'", said the police.

The accused used all loopholes in the banking system of verifications and ensured the quick siphoning of money. During the investigation, it was revealed that the accused had together cheated a total of more than Rs 90 lakh and spoiled the CIBIL score of various celebrities.

"Upon receiving the information, a dedicated team of Cyber Police Station collected the alleged IP Addresses from 'One Card', the Device ID of accused persons, IPDR of alleged 95 mail IDs, CDR of alleged Mobile numbers, details of alleged bank accounts which were involved in settling the cheating amount," said the police.

"After getting the details, an analysis was conducted during which it was revealed that the said fraud was conducted by a gang of Delhi and Jaipur-based persons who worked together in a close conspiracy," the officials added.

Further, after following the leads accused Sunil Kumar was arrested with various mobile phones, forged PAN cards, forged Aadhaar cards, Debit, Credit Cards with fake names, various Sims, forged Voter IDs and E-Shram cards.

Later the police said, "Based on his information other accused were also arrested. The accused together cheated multiple banks like Axis Bank and multiple credit card companies like One Card etc. Other banks and credit card companies are also under investigation regarding their KYC procedure."

Further investigation is underway.

( With inputs from ANI )

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