Investigations have revealed that the three persons arrested some days ago for duping four jewellers from the city of 7.4 kg of gold worth Rs 2.20 crore in June had formed three fictitious companies in the span of a year in the city, Jaipur and Ahmedabad and played the same trick on several people to make crores of rupees.
The police said the two men and a woman arrested used to gain the confidence of people while pretending to be interested in buying gold.u00a0According to the complaint filed in the city after four jewellers realised they had been cheated, the alleged fraudsters had pretended to check the purity of the gold brought to them using a fake scanner in their rented office-cum-residence in Sangavi.
The recovery: The seized gold, equipment and passports
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The arrested persons were identified as Sahil Mangalbhai Morzaria (27), Kisan Nagdas Gokani (37) and Zarine Ahmed Memon (27).u00a0Fence arrested
The Crime Branch Unit III have also arrested a fourth person, Ritesh Desai, a jeweller who the officials said used to purchase the gold stolen by the three suspects.
The police said the three accused had rented a flat in Sangavi, where they started a fictitious company called Future Vision Investment and claimed they were the directors of the company. The police said the trio assumed the fake names of Virel Shah, Vikram Shah and Shreya Shah and told the four jewellers their company invested in gold.
Morzaria, who operated under the name Virel Shah, had called the four jewellers to the company office and told them he wanted to buy some gold from them.
“After the gold theft in the city, the three suspects fled to Jaipur, where they started a another fake company called Mehta Investments and used the same method to dupe a jeweller to the tune of Rs 1.25 crore,” Addl. CP (Crime) Shahaji Solunke said.
“While posing as directors of the company, they used the names Rakesh Mehta, Jitendra Mehta and Manish Mehta.” u00a0He said the fraudsters during interrogation revealed that they had started a company called Shriram Associates in Ahmedabad in Gujarat and duped around 20 people to the tune of 45 lakh by promising them jobs abroad.
“Our team led by Police Inspector Sunil Pawar, who was constantly on the lookout for the suspects in the Pune case, received information that the trio were residing in Borivli in Mumbai and arrested them on November 3 this year,” Solunke said.u00a0He said the police had so far seized 10 kg of gold, gold melting equipment, 33 passports of the victims in the Gujarat case and some forged visa stamps from the residence of the three accused in Mumbai.u00a0
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