Ex-commercial pilot gets dose of her own medicine

A former commercial pilot must have never dreamt that cheats would do something to her that she herself had once done with the government authorities – fraud.

A former Indigo pilot and a resident of Lawrence Road, who put the lives of thousands of passengers at risk by allegedly procuring a flying licence on forged documents, has now lost Rs 4 lakh in a net-banking fraud, forcing her to approach police.

The victim was named by Directorate General of Civil Aviation for submitting fake marks certificates in March 2011.

On June 20, she approached Rajouri Garden police station reporting that she was duped.

She told police that she has an account with ICICI Bank’s Rajouri Garden branch with active net banking and mobile banking.

She had received a call on her mobile phone on June 19 to renew her Know Your Customer service with Vodafone and was asked to send details and ID either to a Vodafone store or by e-mail.

“The person who called introduced himself as a representative of Vodafone. On the same day, the victim replied on an e-mail which she allegedly received from Vodafone,” said a source.

In the e-mail, she sent a scanned copy of her driving licence and pan card. Later, on June 20, she found her phone’s SIM card blocked.

To inquire, she went to Vodafone’s store in Punjabi Bagh where she was told that somebody had reported her original SIM card as lost and collected another SIM card from Vodafone’s store in Hari Nagar at about 11.30 am.

The unidentified man had submitted a copy of her driving licence and pan card with forged signatures.

At about 12.40 pm, the victim’s phone got activated after the SIM collected by the man was deactivated.

Soon, she was shocked to recieve a message about password for funds transfer from her bank account.

“Since I had not made any transaction with ICICI Bank at that time from my account, I called up the bank’s phone banking and blocked my debit card and reported about the fraud,” the victim stated in her complaint to police.

On inquiring from the bank about the withdrawals from her account, the bank informed that five withdrawals between from Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh were made between around 11.30 am and 12.30 pm through net-banking.

Money transferred

On her complaint, a case of cheating under Indian Penal Code was registered with Rajouri Garden police station.

During investigation, it was found that the money had been transferred to different parts of the country – Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Immediately, the investigating officer alerted the bank officials and requested not to release the money.

“Keeping in view the net banking fraud, we took the details of beneficiary account holders in respect of transfer of funds and also made alert to the concerned branches regarding the fraud,” said a police officer.

One of the beneficiary account holder was identified as Amit Pathak, who received Rs 1 lakh in his account.

Police managed to arrest Amit when he went to a bank in Uttam Nagar with a cheque to withdraw the amount.

On interrogation, Amit told police that he hails from UP’s Bareilly district and was working with the sales department of a bank in Moti Nagar and has knowledge of net-banking.

One of his schoolmates, Salman, used to meet  him in Uttam Nagar.

To make easy money, they planned and commit fraud through net-banking. Salman offered to give some part of the money and asked him to provide his account number for the money transfer.

He agreed to it and Rs 1 lakh of the total Rs 4 lakh was transferred to his account in Uttam Nagar. At present, probe is on to recover the entire amount.