Delhi: Conmen make off with ₹40 lakh, leave man holding ‘Manoranjan Bank’ notes

The four men — Asgar Khan (30), Nikhil Srivastava (24), Prince Pal (20), and Parvez Akhtar (43) — were arrested last week

They are school dropouts and unemployed, with no apparent means of income. But behind that modest façade, they ran an elaborate con — posing as money exchangers, and using word-of-mouth referrals and sleight-of-hand tricks, they duped unsuspecting victims out of lakhs. Their latest act played out like a high-stakes scam from a low-budget con movie: they left a 29-year-old accountant holding a trunkful of fake currency notes labelled “Manoranjan Bank of India” and “Full of Fun”, after pocketing ₹40 lakh from him.

The dummy notes. (HT Photo)

The four men — Asgar Khan (30), Nikhil Srivastava (24), Prince Pal (20), and Parvez Akhtar (43) — were arrested last week from a rented flat in Saidullajab, police said on Monday. All four are from Uttar Pradesh and part of an interstate syndicate that specialised in cash-for-cash scams using counterfeit prop currency and staged transactions in upscale neighbourhoods, said deputy commissioner of police (south) Ankit Chauhan.

The arrests followed a complaint registered at CR Park police station on July 6. The complainant, an accountant from Rohini whose name has been withheld by the police, told officers he had arranged ₹40 lakh in his bank account through friends and relatives to purchase a property in Uttam Nagar. Needing the amount in cash, he was introduced to a Faridabad resident named Sachin, who claimed he could facilitate the exchange.

On July 4, the accountant, along with his relative, met Sachin and another man at Nehru Place. While Sachin and the relative stayed behind, the other man made the accountant switch his phone to flight mode and took him to a flat in CR Park, where several men were already present. There, he was shown a trunk full of ₹500 notes. After he verified the notes as genuine, a cash counting machine was brought in, and the bundles were run through it to build trust.

“What he didn’t see was the concealed hole in the wall — hidden behind a bedsheet — through which the counted notes were passed into an adjoining room. In their place, dummy bundles were rotated back and packed into a bag. Once the ₹40 lakh was transferred to the gang’s bank account, the bag — now filled with fake notes — was handed over to the accountant,” the DCP said.

Only after returning to Nehru Place and opening the bag did he realise the switch. The “currency” bore the words “Manoranjan Bank of India” and “Full of Fun”. When he rushed back to the flat, he found it locked. With the landlord’s help, the door was forced open — only to reveal empty rooms, thermocol sheets, and leftover dummy notes.

Chauhan said the gang rented flats in well-to-do areas to appear credible and had used this method in several previous instances. From the Saidullajab flat, police recovered ₹1.25 crore in dummy notes, ₹7.5 lakh in cash, ₹4.5 lakh frozen in a bank account, a cash counting machine, and a mobile phone used in the crime.

During questioning, the accused confessed to defrauding another man of ₹1 crore in Tughlakabad in June — a case registered with the special cell on June 5 — and two more victims in Chhatarpur and Tughlakabad of ₹30 lakh and ₹18 lakh, respectively.

“This was a well-orchestrated operation. They relied on props, preparation, and a false sense of security to pull off large-scale deception,” said DCP Chauhan.