Bank staffers among 12 held for trying to steal from NRI account

In all, the arrested persons made “66 failed attempts” in the past six months to withdraw the money, both by trying to hack into the account using internet banking and by using a fraudulently obtained chequebook, said police

The Delhi Police’s cyber cell (CyPAD) on Tuesday said they have arrested 12 persons, including three employees of HDFC Bank, for attempting to fraudulently withdraw nearly ₹6 crore from a non-resident Indian (NRI)’s dormant account with the bank’s Delhi branch.

Interrogation of the arrested persons, DCP Malhotra said, revealed that they had begun their withdrawal attempts around six months ago and each person had a different task assigned to him/her. (Sourced)

In all, the arrested persons made “66 failed attempts” in the past six months to withdraw the money, both by trying to hack into the account using internet banking and by using a fraudulently obtained chequebook, the police said.

“The fraudsters also procured an Indian mobile number, whose 10 digits were identical to the NRI’s cellphone number in the United States, which was registered with the bank account and was also listed in the know your customer (KYC) details. They attempted to use the Indian mobile number to gain access to the account via internet banking,” said deputy commissioner of police (CyPAD) KPS Malhotra.

CyPAD officials said this was not the first time that this particular account was targeted. In the past year, two other groups also allegedly targeted the NRI’s account and two separate cases were registered in this regard in Punjab’s Mohali and Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad.

In the Mohali incident reported last year, the fraudsters, some of whom were later arrested by the Punjab Police, managed to withdraw ₹2 crore from the account. The suspects in the Ghaziabad case, which was reported just four months ago, failed in their attempts to withdraw money, said DCP Malhotra.

“The suspects in the Mohali case have no links with the persons we arrested on Tuesday. However, the mastermind in our case, Rohit Jaiswal, has links with the suspects in the Ghaziabad case. The same chequebook was used in our case as well as the Ghaziabad case in an attempt to fraudulently withdraw money,” said Malhotra.

Apart from mastermind Jaiswal, the other arrested persons were identified as Gaurav Sharma from Ghaziabad, A Kumar from Greater Noida, Amardeep Tomar from Hapur, Himanshu Yadav from Ghaziabad, Shiv Lal Singh from Bulandshahr, S Tanwar from Gurugram, NK Jatav from Jhansi, S Singh from Baghpat, Dravin Chaurasiya from Bareilly and Atul Singh from Gonda, Uttar Pradesh. The last two men (Chaurasiya and Atul Singh) are bank employees, while the name of the third bank employee, a woman, was withheld by the police.

Interrogation of the arrested persons, DCP Malhotra said, revealed that they had begun their withdrawal attempts around six months ago and each person had a different task assigned to him/her. It was Jaiswal who collected information about the NRI’s dormant account, which had a huge cash balance.

“The woman bank employee was the one who issued the chequebook and also removed the debt freeze from the account. She was promised ₹10 lakh and insurance business of ₹15 lakh (which was target assigned to her by the bank for appraisal) for her role in the fraud. Jaiswal distributed chequebook leaves to his accomplices for clearance with the understanding that he will share 50% of the total money withdrawn from the account with them,” said the DCP.

Police said they became aware of the present case after the HDFC Bank filed a complaint with CyPAD in September, alleging that there were several unsuccessful and unauthorised internet banking attempts to gain access to the NRI’s account and attempts were also made to withdraw cash using a fraudulently obtained chequebook.

“Our systems detected the unauthorised and suspicious attempts to transact certain accounts. On the basis of system alerts, we reported the matter to law enforcement agencies for further investigation, and lodged an FIR,” HDFC bank said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The investigating team took up the probe and on the basis of technical evidence, carbon footprint, and human intelligence, multiple geographical locations were identified. In all, searches were conducted at 20 locations across Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The searches led to the arrest of 12 persons, including three employees of the bank who were involved in issuing the duplicate chequebook, removing the account from debt freeze and attempting to replace the registered mobile number in the KYC, the police said.

“On the basis of the FIR, police have arrested suspects including bank staff. We have suspended the bank staff pending the outcome of the investigation. The bank is extending full support to the law enforcement agencies in the investigation. At HDFC Bank, there is zero tolerance to any misconduct, financial or otherwise,” the bank further said on Tuesday.

Police said more arrests are likely in the case.