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Bank staff among 4 held for siphoning off ₹12.2 crore from CRED operator firm: Report
The accused and his associated managed to link the company's dormant IDs with their personal phone number and email ID to execute the fraud.
Karnataka police arrested an Axis Bank relationship manager and three others on Sunday for allegedly swindling ₹12 crore from Dreamplug Paytech Solutions Pvt Ltd, a Bengaluru-based company that operates the credit card payment platform Cred.
According to a report by The Times of India, this sophisticated fraud was exposed when the company's executives spotted suspicious transactions from their bank accounts and lodged a complaint with the police.
HT cannot independently verify this information.
The initial probe found that ₹12.2 crore was reportedly siphoned off from two Axis bank accounts between October 29 and November 11.
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Among the accused are relationship manager Vaibhav Paithadiya (29); Parmar Neha Ben Vipulbhai (26), a Surat-based banking agent; Shilesh (29), Vaibhav's colleague and an insurance agent; and Shubham (26), a commission agent from Rajkot.
According to the report, the accused allegedly managed to secure unauthorised access to the company's accounts by submitting forged documents.
These included fake signatures and board meeting resolutions requesting changes to the registered mobile number and email ID linked to these accounts.
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The accused initiated fraudulent transactions from Axis Bank branches at Surat and Ankleshwar using their personal phone numbers and email IDs. The bank's verification process failed to notice the location of these requests despite the company being based out of Bengaluru, the report said.
In 2021, the bank issued one corporate ID and four user IDs to the company's accounts, two of which remained inactive. The accused reportedly managed to link these dormant IDs to their personal phone numbers and email IDs and execute the fraud.
The company's executives informed the police that the accused had attempted to swindle ₹15.2 crore but could only transfer ₹12.2 crore. The swindled money was deposited into multiple bank accounts across the country.
Police are investigating the money trail and the lapses in Axis Bank's security verification process that failed to detect the fraud.
