Gang of racketeers selling shares of dormant accounts busted

With the arrest of a person, the city police claimed to have busted a gang which allegedly dematerialised and sold shares of dormant accounts using forged documents, a senior police official of the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police said here today.
The gang, which has allegedly been active since 2007, is estimated to have sold shares worth Rs 10 crore till date, the police said.
According to EOW officers, the gang first came under the scanner in August last year, when a Mumbai resident complained to them that physical shares worth several lakhs of rupees in his deceased relative's account had been dematerialised and sold.

The EOW obtained details of the bank account and demat accounts from leading brokerage firms through which the transactions had been carried out.
Using the cell phone number of the demat account holder, the EOW made further inquiries with various banks and brokerages only to find that the same person had opened a total of 15 accounts.
The gang had opened 76 such accounts across Mumbai, Kanpur and Varanasi.

"We arrested an accused, identified as Rakesh Dikshit (42) from Dadar today. Dikshit himself has 15 accounts in different names. We were tracking him for four days," an EOW officer said.

Explaining the gang's modus operandi, the officer said that the gang allegedly obtained details of dormant accounts in connivance with share registrars and share transfer agents, who would also provide them with specimen signatures of account holders.
The gang would then obtain Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards in the names of account holders, but with their own photographs using forged documents.