Representative image of fraud.
Credit: iStock Photo
Bengaluru: Bengaluru police have arrested four people from Gujarat who allegedly siphoned off Rs 12.5 crore from credit card payments company CRED by stealing its data and forging Corporate Internet Banking (CIB) forms.
The alleged mastermind was Vaibhav Pitadiya, a relationship manager of Axis Bank in Gujarat. CRED has its corporate account in the bank's Indiranagar branch in Bengaluru, according to the police.
The police have recovered Rs 1.83 crore so far.
Pitadiya, 33, devised the scam after discovering that the nodal corporate account linked to Dream Plugpay Tech Solutions Private Limited (CRED) had a daily transaction of over Rs 2 crore, according to the police.
He discovered that two of the corporate accounts linked to CRED’s nodal account were inactive. He was aware of the loopholes that would activate them, a police officer close to the investigation explained.
Pitadiya only had to add another user to the company’s corporate account to initiate transactions. For accounts maintained with the corporate section, the account holder can request to add a user at any branch of Axis Bank.
Pitadiya decided to exploit the loopholes and roped in one of his Instagram friends, Neha Ben. He convinced her to impersonate the company's MD. He then forged board resolutions and letterhead documents to portray Neha as the MD.
"Neha submitted a fake CIB form along with forged documents to Axis Bank in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, requesting for adding another user with a new email and phone number. They got fresh credentials and initiated fraudulent transactions," the officer told DH.
Meanwhile, Pitadiya and Neha convinced two common friends — Shailesh and Shubham — to join them.
Shubham and Shailesh created forged documents and opened mule accounts, the police said.
On November 13, CRED discovered that Rs 12.5 crore was missing during a bank account reconciliation exercise. The company escalated the matter to Axis Bank. It then came to light that between October 29 and November 11, 17 fraudulent transactions were made to dubious bank accounts. The company filed a complaint at the East CEN Crime police station in Bengaluru.
Police visited the bank's Ankleshwar branch and found that it was Neha who had submitted the forms to activate another user ID linked to CRED's nodal account. On December 21, police picked up Neha for questioning, and she led them to Pitadiya and others, the officer said.
The investigations further revealed that the suspects had submitted another CIB form to a different branch of Axis Bank, requesting the activation of another account linked to CRED. However, the exercise has been halted.