Con man held for credit card frauds worth Rs.1 crore

A con man from Maharashtra who cheated ICICI Bank customers by obtaining their credit card data has fallen into the Delhi Police net after illegal online transactions of over Rs.1 crore in the past one year, said an official Sunday.

Raju Tevar was arrested last week by Delhi Police from Palghar in Thane after he was tracked using his cellphone's location, the official said.

In one of his illegal transactions, he used a Delhi woman's credit card to pay Rs.44,911 electricity bill in his state, police said.

Investigators found his photograph on his account on Facebook, a social networking site, which was created with a fake identity of Raju Naik.

Tevar was earlier acquitted in four criminal cases, including murder. He also spent 14 months in a jail in Maharashtra, police said.

He was misusing the data of around 4,500 credit card holders for the last one-and-half years, police said, adding that employees of the bank could be involved in leaking the data to him

Tevar was arrested on a complaint by Abhya Srivastava, resident of central Delhi's Janpath, whose credit card details were obtained by the accused in April on the pretext of blocking her card by telling her that someone had made an online purchase from her card.

"He, claiming to be an ICICI Bank employee, assured the victim to refund her money. But just after getting the card details, he made an electricity bill payment of Rs.44,911 to Maharashtra district electricity board," said S.B.S. Tyagi, deputy commissioner of police.

"There is a strong possibility of the involvement of employees of the ICICI Bank," he said.

The accused disclosed that he had been carrying out the internet transactions for the last one year and duped several people to the tune of over Rs.1 crore, Tyagi said.