Thane police arrest KYC expert in cheating case linked with cyber fraud

While two people have been arrested in the cyber fraud case by Shrinagar police, this is the first arrest in the cheating case related to it lodged by Naupad police

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The Naupada police arrested Kalyan resident Amol Andhale, one of the five named in the case, in the early hours of Thursday in connection with the cheating case related to 260 bank accounts which transacted a whopping ₹16180 crore. This is the first arrest in the case.

A team of officials raided his offices in Navi Mumbai and questioned some employees in those offices. According to them, Andhale was in charge of offices of five firms set up by the firm Riyal Enterprises. The police came to know that Amol Andhale had asked Kedar Dighe to open new bank accounts and bring passbooks and cheque books of these accounts. The police recorded statements of five employees who were working under Andhale in Thane, Navi-Mumbai and Mumbai area.

Police sources said that the accused had also deceived the income tax and GST authorities, and these agencies would conduct a separate probe into the offences. The police estimate the volume of transactions to be ₹16,181.41 crore, and are investigating the source of this money.

In July, HT had exclusively reported a cyber fraud which happened through the escrow account of a payment gateway company, in which ₹25 crore were siphoned off. While investigating the case lodged at Shrinagar police station, it was found that of the ₹25 crore, an amount of ₹1.39 crore had been transferred to Riyal Enterprises, a company with offices at Vashi and Belapur, after which a cheating case was filed against the owners at Naupada police station.

The investigations showed that some of the 260 bank accounts used by Riyal Enterprises and its five partnership firms belonged to economically underprivileged people. The police suspect that Andhale and Dighe, both whom worked with banks, had expertise in KYC process and used the identity documents like Aadhar card and Pan card to open multiple bank accounts in the name of slum dwellers and moved money through them.

Meanwhile, a relative of Amol Andhale told HT “ Amol was working for someone and he was following his seniors’ orders. What police are claiming about Amol is questionable and we will challenge it.”