Conmen fake Bescom bills, give firms a shock treatment

Sleuths of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) vigilance wing, Jayanagar police station, have arrested two persons who had forged Bescom bills and receipts and cheated private firms of several lakhs of rupees.

The duo - identified as Suresh Kumar and Jagadish Sortur (both natives of Bengaluru) - used to access electricity bills of private companies, tamper with them and create fake bills of amounts higher than those mentioned in the original ones.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, A N Prakash Gowda, Superintendent of Police (SP), Bescom, Vigilance wing, said that the duo had opened an account in Axis Bank, JP Nagar, in the name of ‘Messrs Assistant Executive Engineer S8, sub-division Logictech Development, where the money collected from the companies in the form of demand draft (DD) would be deposited. 

“A separate DD would be drawn in favour of Bescom and the receipt would be obtained for the same. The receipt would then be reprinted for the sum mentioned in the fake bills and handed over to the companies,” he explained.

The incident, according to the vigilance wing, came to light after the manager of the bank became suspicious about two DDs drawn in favour of Bescom and informed the vigilance wing officials.

“The duo had cheated three companies - Salarpuria, Billimoria and Neelanchal of Rs 15 lakh, Rs four lakh and Rs two lakh, respectively. One of the accused was working in one of these firms and had access to the electricity bill,” he said.  Mentioning that the account in Axis Bank was created in 2013, Gowda said that the vigilance wing was further investigating into the matter, as to whether any other companies had been conned by the duo and for the possible involvement of any bank personnel. The duo have been booked for cheating, fraud, forgery. The computer, printer, seal and fake Bescom receipts have been recovered from the accused. Prakash said Bescom had not incurred any monetary loss due to this incident, except that its seals and bills had been misused.