Five cyber criminals have been arrested for procuring the PAN card details of 95 prominent celebrities, including Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan and former captain of the Indian cricket team MS Dhoni, and getting credit cards issued in their names, an official said on Friday, March 3. According to officials, the cards were issued from Pune-based fintech startup ‘One Card’. The accused used the details and duped banks of over Rs 50 lakh.
Some of the other celebrities whose names and details were used by the fraudsters were Shilpa Shetty, Madhuri Dixit, Emraan Hashmi, Saif Ali Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Alia Bhatt, Sonam Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, among others. The accused were identified as Puneet, Mohd Asif, Sunil Kumar, Pankaj Mishra, and Vishwa Bhaskar Sharma.
New Delhi Joint Commissioner of Police (Eastern Range) Chhaya Sharma said that the accused forged government IDs of 95 celebrities and eminent persons to dupe banks of over Rs 50 lakh. “The loophole is in documentation and backend verification which needs to be upgraded. All accused have good IT knowledge,” said the top officer. On interrogation, it was revealed that they obtained the GST details of the celebrities by searching online.
“They got the PAN cards remade fraudulently by putting their own pictures on them so that during video verification, their looks match the photo available on their PAN/Aadhaar card. They used to apply for credit cards and during video verification, they were asked questions related to their financial activities which they answered easily as they had got all such details from CIBIL,” the official added.