A gaggle of fraudsters have allegedly procured PAN particulars of a number of Bollywood actors and cricketers – Abhishek Bachchan, Shilpa Shetty, Madhuri Dixit, Emraan Hashmi and Mahendra Singh Dhoni – from their GST Identification Numbers and obtained bank cards issued of their names from Pune-based fintech startup ’One Card’.

The firm subsequently obtained wind of the fraud however not earlier than the fraudsters used a few of these playing cards to make purchases price Rs 21.32 lakh. It instantly alerted the Delhi Police which swung into motion and arrested 5 of them.

According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) of Shahadra Rohit Meena, mentioned, “Investigation into the matter is underway, we cannot comment further on it.”

Sources within the Delhi Police mentioned, the 5 accused — Puneet, Mohd Asif, Sunil Kumar, Pankaj Mishar and Vishwa Bhaskar Sharma — acted in shut coordination to defraud the corporate in a really uncommon method.

“After arrest, when they were interrogated, they disclosed their unique modus operandi. They used to get GST details of these celebrities from Google. They were very well aware that the first two digits of GSTIN are state code and the next 10 digits are PAN number,” one of many sources mentioned.

He added, “Since the celebrities date of birth are available on Google, these two — PAN and date of birth — complete the PAN details. They got the PAN cards remade fraudulently putting their own pictures on it so that during video verification, their looks match with the photo available on PAN/Aadhaar card.” For occasion, the PAN card of Abhishek Bachchan had his PAN and date of delivery however an image of one of many accused.

They additionally equally solid their Aadhaar particulars and after getting this info, they utilized for bank cards. During video verification, they have been requested questions associated to their monetary actions which they answered simply as that they had obtained all such particulars from CIBIL.

The supply mentioned that they have been conscious that these celebrities probably have good CIBIL scores which might brighten their probabilities of getting bank cards. He added, ”Also, they have been conscious that the web verification system can not determine Abhishek Bachchan as a movie star. So the image of accused Pankaj Mishra with Abhishek Bachchan’s PAN and Aadhaar particulars labored nicely to get a card issued.”

Further investigation is on and it’s suspected that they could have used the same modus operandi to get bank cards from different banks and monetary establishments. Police sources additionally knowledgeable that they did on-line analysis for a number of months to seek out methods to make use of loopholes within the on-line verification and issuance of bank cards.

The Pune-based FPL Technologies Private Limited points “One Card” which is a contactless metallic bank card together with a digital rendition of the identical within the One Card and One Score App “so that the customer can use it for any online or app-based transactions or purchases,” the corporate mentioned in its grievance to the police.

The firm additional alleged that these fraudsters approached the corporate by means of their app by importing the small print resembling PAN and Aadhaar quantity to get bank cards issued of their names.

The credit score restrict of the cardboard was once authorised after “taking into account the bureau details, that is, the information of the customer stored with the credit information companies, for example CIBIL, to establish the genuineness and authenticity of the applicant and its credentials,” the grievance mentioned.

It added, “They left the original PAN and Aadhaar number and the date of the birth intact and uploaded the forged PAN card/Aadhaar card on our app. Accordingly, our system fetched the bureau details based on the original PAN and suggested a credit limit.” The firm’s grievance acknowledged that by misusing the identical, “the accused boarded with us by uploading their real time selfie which matched with the photograph on the forged PAN card/Aadhaar card. Accordingly, credit cards were issued to the accused persons with an approved credit limit of Rs 10 lakh each.” “The approved credit limit was exhausted/withdrawn by the accused within a span of a week and nothing has been repaid to us,” the FIR mentioned.

It added, “We came to know about this fraud when our system got an alert that multiple on boarding attempts were being made using a single device. To simplify, the accused tried to onboard with us using a total of 83 PAN details from seven devices.” The firm additionally delivered some bodily bank cards to the addresses talked about on a number of the paperwork.

(With inputs from PTI)