inspired by film ‘Catch me if you can’; Rajasthan conman’s father also arrested in eight cases of fraud

According to police, the father-son duo was inspired by the Hollywood film ‘Catch me if you can’ in which the central character used different identities to commit fraud and evade arrest.

Ramesh Soni impersonated as his son Jayesh and allegedly duped an Ahmedabad-based businessman.

“Ramesh Soni impersonated himself as Jayesh Jain and started working as an assistant accountant at a company in Vadodara which belonged to an Ahmedabad-based businessman. He then stole a cheque from the cheque book of his employer and made a fake stamp on it to get it cleared in his name for an amount of Rs 14.78 lakhs. We arrested him on Saturday and based on our probe, his involvement has come out in seven more cases with the same modus operandi. Both father and son operated in different cities as conmen,” said a police officer at Narol police station.

According to police, the accused father and son are proficient in English, Hindi and Gujarati. In 2015, they watched the film ‘Catch me if you can’ and got an idea from it where they learned account auditing, tally software and excel sheet work from YouTube. Then the accused allegedly used MS Paint software to create multiple fake IDs of their own Aadhaar and PAN cards. Using the fake IDs they created several bank accounts in Udaipur, Vadodara and Ahmedabad and got SIM cards under fake names as well. Police further stated that after creating fake IDs, the accused then started contacting companies in different cities for job vacancies. The modus operandi followed by the two accused was very similar to that of US conman Frank Abagnale as shown in the film.

According to police, Ramesh Soni has committed frauds in Ahmedabad (4), Vadodara (1) and Jaipur (3) from 2015 till now.