A 43-year-old man Ramaswamy Nadar working as a gold valuer at a public sector bank in Mumbai, India, has been arrested after he allegedly used fake customers to defraud the bank of Rs3.77 crore (Dh1.9m).
As reported by the Press Trust of India, when the bank recently decided to liquidate some of its assets and opened lockers holding gold items in 77 packets, they found the yellow metal to be fake. The bank then immediately lodged a complaint with the Dharavi police station.
Modus operandi
According to the report: “During the probe, the police zeroed-in on Nadar, who, after initially denying any role in the scam, confessed that he had purchased fake jewellery from Dadar and set up 12 dummy customers to cheat the bank. He was subsequently arrested on Wednesday,” senior police inspector Suresh Patil said.
The accused, Nadar was a resident of Antop Hill area in Mumbai. He was working in the gold loan department of the Indian Bank’s Dharavi branch for past two years. Nadar’s job was to issue value certificates to those opting for gold loans.
Besides working at the bank he was also running his own jewellery shop.
For this operation, Nadar arranged for 12 accomplices to pose as customers. “Nadar’s job was to issue value certificates to those opting for gold loan. He used documents like PAN and Aadhaar cards to show 12 of his accomplices as customers. These customers then deposited fake gold at the bank and Nadar fraudulently gave them value certificates,” Patil said.
An amount of Rs 3.77 crore was given as loan against gold to these customers, another police official said. “This money was siphoned-off by Nadar after giving the dummy customers a small sum,” he added.
Nadar purchased some property, cars and motorcycles with the amount, he said. “Efforts were underway to recover the money from him. He has been charged under Indian Penal Code Sections 420 (cheating) and 34 (common intention), and a hunt is on for the 12 people who helped him in the scam,” he said.
