BHUBANESWAR: Bhubaneswar police on Saturday seized 450 credit and debit cards and recovered transaction details of Rs 2 crore from six frauds who connived with billing agents of a corporate hospital to con people.
The credit cards were generated without the knowledge of the bearers of the instrument and created with forged documents, police said. Of the six, two were found to be staff of the corporate hospital. Another was an employee of ICICI Bank.
A police investigation found that the scamsters used to accept cash from gullible patients but would swipe the credit cards to pay for their bills. While most patients never realized they were taken for a ride, the frauds used to take a cut from the cash at the expense of the bearer of the credit card.
The matter came to light after Rakesh Kumar, a native of Rajasthan, opened an account with ICICI Bank’s Patrapada branch and deposited Rs 30,000 in it. When Rakesh applied for a loan, his application was rejected on the grounds of poor credit score due to an outstanding of Rs 1.40 lakh related to a payment made to a private hospital using a credit card issued in his name.
Alarmed, Rakesh complained to the Cyber Crime and Economic Offence police station in the city. During the investigation, police tracked down Prasanjit Dash, one of the accused who had earlier worked in the credit card section of a public sector bank. He had contacts with officials of various banks and collected details of their customers.
Prasanjit had forged the documents of Rakesh and applied for an ICICI credit card with the help of his associate Pradeep Kumar Samantara, an employee of ICICI Bank. It was Samantara who issued the credit card without properly verifying the details.
They also had the company of Biju Tripathy who collected the credit cards and used to swipe the cards at the hospital. Abdul Rahman and Rajesh Dash, both staff of the corporate hospital, assisted Biju in committing the fraud.
Around 78 bank passbooks, 50 chequebooks, Rs 7 lakh in cash, six swiping machines and other articles have been seized from the accused, said DCP Prateek Singh. The six accused - Prasanjit, Pradeep, Mukesh Mantri, Biju, Abdul and Rajesh have been arrested. Further probe is underway.