Bengaluru: Bengaluru police have arrested a chartered accountant from Noida, who allegedly conned 11 people by providing them fake electronic bank (e-bank) guarantees worth an estimated Rs 168.13 crore.
Ashish Saxena, a 45-year-old suspect, was detained by immigration authorities at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on March 13. He was subsequently brought to Bengaluru and placed under arrest, police said.
According to the police, Saxena used his network with other CAs to contact his victims, some of whom were civil contractors in Karnataka, and offered them e-bank guarantees for a commission. Police said the man obtained an estimated Rs 5 crore from the victims.
The victims then uploaded the fake e-bank guarantees in the name of ICICI Bank and South Indian Bank to National E-Governance Services Limited (NeSL) after Saxena provided them with login credentials, a police officer close to the investigation said.
On February 7, an official from NeSL filed a police complaint at the Cyber Crime Police Station in Bengaluru about the fake e-guarantees, which were detected following scrutiny. As they were in the victims’ names, police questioned them only to find out about the scheme by Saxena.
The investigators from the Cyber Crime Police Station sent a special team to New Delhi and Noida. The team found that Saxena was based in Kuwait and issued a Look Out Circular (LOC) against him.
From the suspect, police recovered two laptops, six mobile phones, one pen drive and 10 cheque books from different bank accounts. They also found that similar cases were registered in Bengaluru Rural and Tumakuru districts, and he had conned people in the same fashion in Gujarat and Delhi in the past.
"He had another accomplice who is at large,” an investigator said. “Hunt is on to nab him.”
(Published 27 March 2024, 07:37 IST)
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