STF arrests four in bank fraud

Noida: Four persons including three brothers were arrested by Noida Special Task Force (STF) police for allegedly duping several banks including ICICI and City bank to the tune of Rs 2.1 crore on the pretext of personal and car loans.

According to police, the accused have been identified as Manoj Thakur, Sanjay Thakur, Animesh Thakur and Ajeet Sharma, all four belongs to Gautam Budh Nagar.

Manoj, who had failed class 10th is the leader of the gang while Sanjay has done MBA from Delhi University and Animesh is doing CA. All three brothers also have a connection with Nepal and have some group members in Nepal.

R K Mishra, deputy superintendent of Noida STF said that the accused were arrested from their rented office in Sector 63 after a raid conducted by police.

"The modus operandi was that the accused would start a finance company at different locations and hire fake employees. Personal and car loans would be processed in the names of the employees from different banks but after some time, the accused would flee with the loan amount without repaying the banks," Mishra said.

"Manoj came in Delhi in 2006 and worked as an executive in idea company. In 2008, he called his two younger brothers after that he changed the company and started works with Airtel. His work was to give connection to the customer. During this period, he collected people IDs and address proof and learnt the art of forgery with documents. Then he opened several companies and opened the salary account of employees of the company with several banks. They also took personal and car loans in the name of their employees by forgery documents and they fled with money and shut the company," Mishra added.

As many as 56 accounts of the accused have come to the fore with one account with Rs 22 lakhs being frozen while over Rs 60,000 in Nepali currency has been recovered, said

police.