Rs 34 Lakh credit card fraud busted
For these 23 people, it was a shock they are yet to come to terms with. First, it was credit card bills running into lakhs a month for jewellery, garments and furniture purchases, which they never made. Then, they received demand letters to pay up for loans they never took. The worst was for the last. All this jewellery which they never bought were mortgaged with finance companies in exchange for cash, which they were asked to return.
Running out of options, they did the only thing that came to their mind then complain to the private bank who had issued them these credit cards, seemingly the only cause of their misfortune. The bank smelt a rat and lodged a complaint with the detective department’s Bank Fraud Section on January 31. “The total loss, of all the complainants put together, was around `34 lakh. But it’s actually more than that,” said an officer.
The investigation has thrown up a unique modus operandi, which bears testimony to how bank’s processes can be flouted and the manner in which your personal data enough to lead one to your personal bank accounts are up for sale. The gang used for this gullible courier boy, who’d hand over anything to anyone for a price. Overnight raids on Tuesday, led by investigating officer Mriganko Das, led to the arrest of five youths including the alleged kingpin and two courier boys and seizure of jewellery, computer hard disks and even a motorcycle, among other things. The city court on Wednesday remanded the five in police custody for 10 days.
The first to be nabbed was a Rash Behari Avenue youth, Sanjoy Das, who worked as an agency executive for a public sector bank. “He was arrested on February 1,” said Dilip Adak, DCP, detective department. Among his tasks, Das had to collect documents from existing credit card holders, who had expressed an interest in having another card from the bank. Das would go to their homes and as required, collect the imprint of their existing credit card, their bank transaction details, identity and address proofs. While Das gave this to his bank, he also shared it with Rajkumar Maiti, a Behala youth, for a “price”.
Maiti, with the details he had, called up the bank in which the victims already had their cards. With the personal details he had mother’s maiden name, last three bank transactions, address and date of birth it was easy for Maiti to impersonate the victims and thus break the bank’s security barrier and generate a one-time Telephone-Pin (TPIN). With it, Maiti was able to check the balance in the credit cards.
Now, Maiti would again call up the bank’s customer care, this time to request a change of address (according to bank records). He would again call up to register a new cellphone number. This done, he would again call to hotlist the credit card and then request for a new one this one at the changed address. The “real” card holders would be hardly aware of this. The mobile updates, which banks insist on, were sent to the new cell numbers, that is, Maiti himself. dharti punjabi movie
Even then, it would have been difficult for Maiti and his cohorts, Ashish Kumar Majumder and Ranjan Chakraborty, to actually get the new credit cards at seemingly fictitious addresses. Banks make it mandatory for courier agencies to hand over the cards only to the “actual customer”, whose photograph is present with the bank, or to a blood relative. In both cases, an original photo-identity card is required.
To bypass this, Maiti roped in two courier delivery boys Abhijit Das and Pintu Pandit. Das and Pandit delivered these new cards to Maiti and his accomplices, lying that they’d seen the original PAN card, mentioning its number (a photocopy of which anyway was with Maiti). The gang then went around the city on a buying spree. Whatever they bought was being billed to the original customers.
The ease with which they outsmarted the bank and its customers led this gang to take more risks, multiplying the losses for the victims. With the jewellery they bought, including a diamond-studded necklace for `3 lakh, they went to private finance companies taking loans against the jewellery. They faked the documents of the original customers to avail of the loan.
As if this wasn’t enough, they even applied for loan-on-phones, an innovation developed by banks to offer easy loans to preferred customers with good credit history. The victims were sound customers. “They took such loans thrice the first for 7 lakh, the remaining for 2 lakh and a lakh respectively impersonating the real customers,” an officer said. For this, they’d open fake accounts, which they did rather easily, with fake documents.
“Account-takeover-frauds, such as these, are on the ebb in Kolkata after successive arrests a couple of years back. Many banks, based on our suggestions, have discontinued the process of changing either telephone numbers or addresses of customers over phone. Also, if someone asks for a new card to a recently changed address, the banks should be very cautious. However, a few banks still allow these, which could lead to such incidents even in future,” an officer said.
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