Mansa police bust inter-state gang of fraudsters, arrest 4

Tribune News Service

Mansa, December 6

The Mansa police have busted an inter-state gang which had allegedly floated a fake finance firm and was duping people of their hard-earned money by extending them lucrative loan offers.

According to a release issued here today, complainant Buta Singh, a resident of Attla Khurd, said he came across an advertisement by a finance firm during his visit to Sangrur. He rang up the firm at one of their mobile numbers and the person on the other side offered him Rs5-lakh loan at a “special rate of interest”.

As asked by the firm, Buta deposited Rs3,200 as advance file charges and then Rs20,000 as instalment. Later, on the demand of the suspect, he further deposited Rs18,600 as tax and Rs15,500 as insurance fee. Thus, he deposited a total of Rs57,300 in their account. Even after depositing such a big amount, when the accused asked the complainant to deposit another Rs22,000 in their account, he grew suspicious about it. Besides this, the accused had also got deposited Rs20,000 from Harpal Singh, a resident of Alisher Kalan, on the pretext of getting him loan.

The complaint was entrusted to the Economic Offences Wing, Mansa, which conducted a detailed investigation. The probe revealed that the suspects had constituted an inter-state gang, which was operating on modus operandi of not using their own mobile numbers or bank accounts. They were rather using mobiles number and accounts of innocent people, who were not even aware about their activities.

The suspects first contacted them, offering lucrative offers of easy loan and procured their mobile numbers, bank accounts details and ATM pin. Subsequently, they used their mobile numbers and accounts for their fraudulent activities. Their main targets were the people, who were unable to pay processing fees, advance instalments of loan. The suspects would use these accounts for depositing money by fraudulent means and later on, withdrew the money through ATM or card swapping. A laptop was used to make a fake ID card of their company and other forged documents using real documents of the these persons/company employees with the help of a software.

The police have freezed bank accounts used by culprits. Till date, they had contacted nearly 100 persons with an objective of defrauding them and had cheated 22 persons of around Rs15 lakh.

Mansa SSP Dr Narinder Bhargav said a case has been registered against Dalwinder Singh, Sunil Kumar, both residents of Malout, Sahil Sukhija from Hansi, Haryana, and Parveen Singh from Sirsa, Haryana. They have already been arrested. However, kingpin Maninder Singh, a resident of Malout, and Sonu Sharma, a resident of Ballabhgarh, are still at large

Modus Operandi

• The suspects had floated a firm and would issue advertisements offering loan on easier terms. They would obtain account, ATM and other details of those who contacted them.
• They would ask loan seekers to deposit money for various reasons such as insurance fee, instalment, etc. 
• The bank accounts of the loan seekers were then used by the suspects to perform dubious transactions. Later, they would withdraw all money from the account of customers by using the bank details or card swapping.