Mumbai: Banker plays double role to dupe client of Rs 10 lakh, first arrest in 2 hours

MUMBAI: Playing double roles is not restricted to the movies alone. A former employee of a private bank pulled this ‘twin’ stunt by pretending to be ‘a colleague’ at the same bank and allegedly duped a bank customer of Rs 9.5 lakh. Showing unusual alacrity, the police arrested this alleged fraudster within two hours of the FIR being registered. Three of his accomplices have also been nabbed.
The complainant, a businessman, had spoken to the ‘bank employee’ — actually the former bank staffer himself — about a problem in his online transactions.Later, he shared his account details and OTP with the ‘employee’ to solve the problem but ended up losing Rs 9.5 lakh.
The FIR was registered at V P Road police station on Tuesday.. Within two hours the police nabbed Dattaram Solanki (43), a Khar resident. Later, three others — a bank employee Vijay Ghadge (29), and two real estate agents, Nilofar Saifi (36) and Naresh Pawar (42) — were held. All are in police custody.
The complainant, Hitesh Chaudhary, who has his account with the private bank knew the employee, Ghadge. Last month, he called him up for help about online transactions. “Ghadge told him he had quit the bank but gave him the number of ‘another person, Sanket, from the bank’ who could help,” said sub-inspector Ravindra Lambhate. Later, Sanket called up Chaudhary and sought details about the problem and the account.
On Tuesday, Sanket called up Chaudhary to say that he had solved the problem and told Chaudhary to share an OTP that he would get on his phone. Chaudhary shared the OTP. “He was shocked to see a message that Rs 9.5 lakh was transferred from his account,” said an officer.
The police went to Chaudhary’s bank, got information of the account where the money was transferred. Soon, police reached Solanki’s home and nabbed him. “He had withdrawn Rs 6.5 lakh,” said an officer. Solanki admitted to sharing his account details with the other accused who were also arrested.
Ghadge sought help for an account to transfer the money. “Ghadge played the role of ‘Sanket’ too. Solanki got Rs 3 lakh, Saifi kept Rs 1 lakhand forwarded the rest to Pawar and Ghadge who worked at the private bank at the time. A team supervised by DCP Dr Saurabh Tripathi, led by senior inspector Kishor Shinde and officers Sanjay Sagwekar, Kailash Bele, Avinash Shinde and Amit Bhosale is probing the case.