Bank officials turn thieves

2 ICICI Bank employees held for Rs 2.95 lakh fraud; cops say similar cases at other branches of the bank have been reported

The next time a bank official asks for your account details, do a double-check before trusting him.u00a0u00a0
The Delhi police have arrested five persons, including two bank employees, and a struggling model, for allegedly cheating people by withdrawing cash from their bank accounts using phone banking facility.


Can't trust them: The five people involved in cheating bank customers
PICs/RAJEEV TYAGI

Modus operandi
The accused used to collect information about customers by meeting them, posing to be bank officials.
They would write down personal details in a feedback form, with which they used to cheat the customer later.
The cops said Amit Chauhan, 29, Sunil Grover 21, Raman Preet Singh, 26, Ashish Tiwari, 24 and Deepak Malik, 33, were arrested after they received a complaint from Sidharth Bharadwaj, an ICICI Bank customer, that someone had fraudulently withdrawn Rs 2.95 lakh from his bank account.

In a complaint filed on January 14 at Lodhi Colony police station, Bharadwaj alleged someone had fraudulently withdrawn Rs 2.95 lakh from his account (No 629401540695). Police inquiry revealed the amount was withdrawn from the account through a self cheque on December 15, last year.

At the time of withdrawing the sum, the holder of the cheque had allegedly produced a driving licence in the name of Siddharth Bhardwaj and the photograph on the licence matched his looks.

How they worked
But Bharadwaj said he had never received the cheque leaf through which the amount was withdrawn.
Further investigations revealed the request for the book from where the cheque leaf had been taken out was placed through phone banking facility and an unknown person had impersonated Bhardwaj and collected it.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (South district) HGS Dhaliwal said, "After analysing the security camera footage of the time when the suspected persons had visited the bank to withdraw cash, it was revealed more such cases had taken place in other branches of ICICI Bank in the city to the tune of Rs 20 lakh."

"During interrogation, Chauhan and Grover disclosed they contacted Tiwari and Malik and managed to procure relevant details of targeted customers.

On the basis of the information collected, they contacted Singh, a printer, who prepared duplicate identification documents. Tiwari supplied Chauhan photographs of customer signatures from the bank's computer records," said Dhaliwal.