Bihar man’s IDs used for fraud of over ₹48 crore

The victim had shared his PAN and Aadhar details with a factory he had worked with in north Delhi in 2019, from where he had been fired after three months.

The economic offences wing (EOW) of Delhi Police has registered a case of cheating by impersonation, forgery, and criminal conspiracy after it emerged that an organised syndicate had allegedly used the identification documents of a Bihar resident to float a company and then use it for high-value financial transactions, police officers aware of the matter said on Sunday.

Bihar man’s IDs used for fraud of over ₹48 crore

The matter first came to light in 2023 when Karan Kumar Ram, 40, received at least three notices from income tax (I-T) offices in Karnataka, Haryana’s Gurugram, and his hometown Siwan, seeking an explanation regarding financial transactions of ₹48 crore and ₹35.05 lakh made by the company in 2020-21 and 2019-20, respectively. He filed a complaint with Delhi Police in July this year, according to a senior police officer, who did not wish to be named.

The victim had shared his PAN and Aadhar details with a factory he had worked with in north Delhi in 2019, from where he had been fired after three months. He has been unemployed since then. Suspecting that his IDs had been misused, Ram filed a complaint with the north district police in July this year for a thorough investigation.

In his complaint, told the police that he had come to Delhi in April 2019 to search for a job. He got a job as a data entry operator at a footwear and watches manufacturing factory in north Delhi’s Inderlok run by a senior employee, a resident of Madhya Pradesh. He had been introduced to the man by a neighbour of his in Siwan. [CHECK]

He was paid a monthly income of ₹15,000, according to Ram’s complaint. He was asked at the time to share his PAN and Aadhar cards to open salary accounts, but he was not informed of any action taken in this regard after.

According to Ram’s complaint, the senior employee then asked him and other newly appointed employees to submit their PAN and Aadhar cards for opening their salary accounts in a bank. He told them an executive from the bank would conduct their know you customer (KYC) verification and open their accounts.

“Whenever he enquired about it, the senior employee ignored him and told him that he was anyway going to be paid his salary in cash,” the officer quoted above said. Ram also alleged that the senior employee had tricked him into changing the residential address on his Aadhar card.”

In December 2019, when Ram went back to his hometown, he was told that he had been fired over the phone, the officer said. He had worked at the factory for only around three months

From then, he was unemployed and stayed in his hometown However, in January 2023, Ram received the first I-T department’s notice from Karnataka.

“Suspecting that [the senior employee] and others could have misused his IDs for the cheating and forgery, Ram filed a complaint with the north district police in July this year for a thorough investigation. The matter was later transferred to the EOW, which after conducting the preliminary investigations found enough evidence to register a first information report (FIR) on December 24, and arrest people behind the organised cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy,” the officer added.