Date:12/07/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/07/12/stories/2009071252240300.htm

New Delhi

Man arrested for credit card frauds

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: A 23-year-old graduate having previously worked as assistant manager in two private banks has been arrested in Sarojini Nagar here for allegedly duping over 75 people by procuring their credit cards through fraudulent means and making purchases with them.

The accused, Ravi Kumar Sandhu, a resident of Paharganj, has allegedly duped credit card holders of various multi-national and nationalised banks of over Rs.4 crore in different parts of Delhi and neighbouring Faridabad, Gurgaon and Noida.

The police claim to have seized an Accent car, split air conditioners, LCD televisions, cameras, mobile phones, expensive wrist watches, branded clothes, a juicer-mixer-grinder, computer and household furniture worth over Rs.15 lakh allegedly purchased through the credit cards of the victims.

The cheating came to light when Samir Gupta, a resident of Sarojini Nagar, lodged a complaint with the police saying that a young man posing as an executive of a prominent courier company took away his credit card and made purchases over Rs.40,000 from various shops in Sarojini Nagar market. Mr. Gupta told the police that a representative of the courier company delivered a credit card to his wife Manit on April 27, but 10 minutes later the young man came to his house and took away the credit card saying that some corrections were to be made. He promised to return the card in two hours. Mr. Gupta realised that he had been duped when he got an SMS saying that purchases had been made through his card.

Taking up the investigation, a police team found that the accused had changed 10 mobile handsets and 56 mobile phone numbers in the past eight months.

He had procured the connections against fictitious documents. Raids were mounted at his various hideouts in Delhi and neighbouring areas and the accused was arrested on July 8 while he was allegedly planning to cheat another credit card holder.

Seven fake identity cards, five credit cards and 16 forged credit card receiving letters on behalf of the courier company were allegedly seized from him.

Ravi, a former assistant bank manager, used his knowledge about functioning of credit card divisions and their delivery through the courier company to cheat the cardholders.

Ravi runs a cafeteria in one of the prominent hospitals in Faridabad. His father is a government employee.