Group of four promise firm Rs100-crore loan, dupe it of Rs1 crore

Two of a group of four were arrested in Sewri for allegedly duping a construction company of Rs1.12 crore on the pretext of loaning them Rs100 crore. Things went south when one of the accused accidentally shared his original number with the complainant.

The Sewri police has arrested Vijay Tribhuvan, 37, who allegedly posed as a managing director of a company, and Sagar Chaudhary, the alleged mastermind. The four had also rented an office in Powai.

In 2015, a Visakhapatnam-based company started a new project in Mumbai and set up an office in Sewri. They were in desperate need of money for the project. So one of the company officials advised them to contact Chaudhary.

An officer from Sewri police station said, “The company officials met the gang of fraudsters in September 2015 and struck a deal the next month. The accused said they will sanction the Rs100 crore loan but needed the company to pay a processing fees of Rs1.12 crore.” During this meeting, Tribhuvan gave the company officials his personal number by mistake. The company gave them the fees in their Powai office the same month. But after that whenever the complainant followed up with them, they said since the amount was huge they were looking for an auspicious occasion to sanction it. The company officials realised that they had been duped when the alleged pranksters stopped answering their calls. The officials even visited their Powai office, which was shut.

In March 2016, the company officials filed a complaint with the Sewri police station. A case was registered under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

The investigating officers initially had a tough time finding any clue that could lead them to the fraudsters. “During the investigation, one of the officials had a phone number which the accused had accidentally given it to him during their first meeting and he had written it down on a paper. We got his call data record and nabbed him from his Navi Mumbai residence,” said an officer.