According to Delhi Police, they have arrested five people for forging the government IDs of 95 celebrities and prominent citizens in order to defraud banks of over Rs 90 lakh.
“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 discovered that the accused obtained GST information for these celebrities from Google. According to the police, the first two digits of GSTIN are the state code, and the next ten digits are the PAN number. Because the date of birth of these celebrities is easily accessible on Google, the accused obtained two important PAN details: 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 took advantage of all verification loopholes in the banking system to ensure quick money syphoning. During the investigation, it was discovered that the accused had collectively cheated more than Rs 90 lakh and ruined the CIBIL scores of several 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.
