Cops arrest 5 ‘EPFO officials’ who duped old man of ₹4 cr

Five people have been arrested in Mumbai for defrauding a senior citizen of ₹4.35 crore by posing as officials from the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). The accused promised to help the senior citizen withdraw ₹11 crore from his Provident Fund account. Police have recovered ₹40 lakh and 43 debit cards from the accused. They are still searching for 7-8 other suspects involved in the case.

Mumbai: The Cuffe Parade police have arrested five people accused of defrauding a senior citizen of ₹4.35 crore and recovered ₹40 lakh from them. The accused posed as officials of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and extracted money from the senior citizen claiming they could help him withdraw ₹11 crore accumulated in his Provident Fund account.

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Three of the arrested accused – Basant Sharma alias Sanjay Kumar Uprethi, 58; Hemant Sharma, 26; and Gautam Verma, 36 – are from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. Two others – Rehmatulla Khan, 42, and Akthar Shafi Ahmed Hussain, 20 – are residents of Gorakhpur. Police has recovered 43 debit cards from them, so it seems that they made several fake bank accounts to avoid being traced, said an officer from the Cuffe Parade police station.

“We are still searching for 7-8 other accused in the case. Most of them work from Uttar Pradesh or other states like Delhi, making it difficult to trace and arrest them,” the officer added.

The case was registered in October, following a complaint by Aban Firoze Hirjikaka, wife of the Firoze Hirjikaka, who retired from an engineering services company several years ago.

In May this year, Aban Hirjikaka got a call from a woman who identified herself as Sandhya Bharadwaj from the EPFO and told her that her husband had not withdrawn his PF money. She claimed Firoze Hirjikaka had deposited around ₹4 lakh in the account, which had matured to ₹11 crore, said a police officer.

Bharadwaj subsequently provided Firoze with contact numbers of her colleagues who could help him withdraw the money. They informed the senior citizen that he would have to pay various taxes totalling 30% of the ₹11 crore accumulated in his PF account.

After Firoze Hirjikaka made this payment, another person called him and asked him to pay the processing fees. He paid the processing fee as well but got another call asking for more money sometime later. This time, he refused to pay any money.

A few days later, Bharadwaj called Firoze Hirjikaka and told him that if he did not pay the money, they would report the matter to the Reserve Bank of India and the income tax department following which his bank accounts would be frozen and he would even lose his ₹11 crore. Altogether, he paid ₹4.35 crore to the frauds before approaching the police.