5 persons held for duping people by duplicating cheques

Five persons, including a bank manager, have been arrested for allegedly duping people of huge amount of money by duplicating cheques of various public and private banks, police said today.
It has been found that over 30 bank accounts belonging to a total of 17 public as well as private sector banks have been compromised with active connivance of bank employees, third party vendors, Additional DCP (South) Chinmoy Biswal said.
The compromised bank accounts are located all across India, especially in Delhi, Mumbai, Dibrugarh, Chandigarh, Coimbatore etc, he said.
A man on March 12 reported a fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 95 lakh from his Punjab National Bank account in the name of a reputed NGO through a cheque he never issued, the officer said.

The amount had then been transferred to the bank account of a timber store in Haryana. Initial investigation revealed that the debited amount had further been transferred into various bank accounts, he said.
One of the accused, Amarjeet Singh, the PNB account holder who had presented the duplicate cheque was traced and apprehended on the same day the matter was reported, Biswal said.

"He revealed that the cheque had been given to him by Rajeev Gupta alias Gaurav Kumar Goel along with his associates. The deal to receive Rs 95 lakh was sealed after Goel was promised Rs 30 lakh," the officer said.

Amarjeet knew Goel through some contacts but was unaware of his location. Amarjeet but remembered the last four digits of the registration number of Goel's car, he said.
After the said car was found, it was learnt that it had exchanged three ownerships in quick succession. After a fortnight, Goel was arrested from Sector 62 of Noida in Uttar Pradesh, the officer said.
Over 70 duplicate and forged cheques, issued from various banks were seized from his possession.
Goel revealed that he was in the business of arranging clients for duplicate cheques on a commission. The forged cheques were made available to him for 'sale' by a network of operators, primary amongst them being one Chirag Chaudhary of Delhi.

He also disclosed that he was availing the services of one Shanu, who used to fill in critical data like IFSC and MICR Code along with the signatures using sophisticated tools to complete a cheque leaflet as per the data provided to him by Chaudhary and others, the officer said.
While Chaudhary has fled India on March 17 and is suspected to be USA, Shanu was nabbed from Dwarka area.
From his possession, a sophisticated printer along with 19 forged cheques belonging to various banks and issued against accounts spread over various cities of India were recovered.
A laptop used to prepare forged cheques, stamps, high quality magnetic ink used to print MICR and other articles which were used for duplicating cheques were also recovered.

Shanu used extremely sharp blades to chip away the printed codes. Thereafter, he used special ink procured from certain grey markets of West Bengal, to reprint the compromised codes and cheque numbers using a software, said the officer.
Once the duplicate cheques were completed, he used to forge the signatures' of the account holder. The signatures were mostly provided to him in scanned copies by Chaudhary and Goel.
Chaudhary was running a restro-bar in Karol Bagh as a cover for his activities apart from other businesses of gym, spa etc.
"It has also been learnt that his father Naveen Chaudhary, a Chartered Accountant with a good business circle amongst bankers, that might have helped his son. Naveen has also left India for USA along with his son," said the officer.

One of Chaudhary's associates, Sunil was arrested from Naraina on April 9 and it was found that one Pritam Das, who works as senior manager at Punjab National Bank's Khanpur branch was also involved in compromising details of bank accounts, he said.
Das was arrested from New Palam Vihar, Gurgaon on April 10. He used to pass on the information to the accused since he had access to details about various accounts, he said.
Police has recovered a huge number of duplicate cheques of various public as well as private sector banks like PNB, SBI, HDFC, Bank of Baroda, Axis, Bank of India, etc.

Apart from the cheques, sophisticated type fonts and restricted ink used to re-print MICR and IFSC codes has been recovered.
Police is planning to bring Chaudhary here by opening his LOC, the officer added.