Gang busted for duping 500 people of Rs 2 crore on pretext of loans

Post demonetisation, cyber crime cases have gone up as reported by this newspaper about how financial fraud and harassment against women are now taking place. Now, a fresh case has come to light in which six people were arrested for duping more than 500 people of more than Rs 2 crore, on the pretext of offering loans.

The accused had set up a fake insurance company in the name of Reliance Capital, Manipuram Finance and Aditya Birla Finance. Furthermore, cops have also recovered 12 mobile phones, two laptops and three ATM cards of Punjab National Bank and SBI from the accused.

The accused have been identified as Deepak, Rajesh, Raj Kumar, Anuj Baliyan, Vikas and Neeraj. They were arrested from various parts of the city after the police had conducted technical surveillance, social media profiling; call details and bank accounts were also analysed after which their locations were ascertained.

The case came to light when a complainant, Shushma had reported that she was duped by the gang. She had found an advertisement in a local newspaper by ‘Reliance Capital’. The advertisement had promised a load against her education certificates. She approached the company for a loan for Rs 4 lakh and she paid Rs 5,400 as an insurance fee and transferred the money to an account provided by them.

She later got a call from HDFC bank and an official asked her for an additional Rs 17,500 to get her application approved by RBI. She then grew suspicious when they demanded Rs 22,500 for the approval of loan after which the complaint was registered.

During their interrogation, the accused had revealed that they knew each other for the past two years. They had set up the fake loan company and also used the newspaper as a medium to target victims. They promised the victims a loan against their educational certificates and used Reliance as the name to avoid suspicion.

Further investigation is underway to nab the remaining accused and to also find out if any more victims were duped in the similar manner.