Man arrested for running cheating racket

Delhi police has arrested a man, allegedly part of a cheating racket involving a gang whose members acted as bank officials and took commission from people promising to hire their premises to install ATMs.
Police arrested Basant Sharma (33), resident of Harayana, who along with one Gaurav Sharma used to impersonate officials of the Citibank bank and allegedly cheated eight people of Rs 9.65 lakh.
Police had received several complaints from people in Delhi and NCR alleging that one Gaurav Sharma, claiming to be the Area Sales manager of Citibank, contacted them for leasing out floor space in their premises for setting up ATMs.

As per the complaints, he had asked them to pay an amount of Rs 25,000 as processing fees per ATM and they were also issued letters of intent (LOIs) on the bank's letter head, it said.
On examination, the documents were found to be forged and not issued by Citibank, the police said adding that a case of cheating was registered, police said.
Investigation had revealed that the cheating racket was allegedly being run by Gaurav, a Delhi resident, and accused Basant, police said.

Thereafter, Basant was arrested by a Crime Branch team of Delhi police on a tip off it received.

His interrogation had revealed that the two had earlier worked in Standard Chartered and ICICI banks and were aware about the process of hiring premises for installing ATMs.
They allegedly used to impersonate as Citibank officials and assure the landlords that their property can be hired for installing the ATMs if the duo is paid commission of Rs one lakh apart from the processing fees, police said.
They would even execute fake lease agreements and would disappear once they get the commission amount, the police said, adding that the probe is going on in the case to nab Gaurav and identify other victims, if any.