Mason held for credit card fraud; duped firms of lakhs

The police on Sunday said they arrested a 30-yearold man who worked as a mason for allegedly cheating people and financial institutions of several lakhs of rupees through credit card frauds. The police also seized from the man an SUV he bought for ₹21 lakh, of which ₹19.5 lakh was financed.

The arrested man, Shakeel Alam, duped a multinational financial services company of nearly Rs 15.40 lakh using four of the company’s credit cards that he got using fake identification documents. The company filed a complaint at the Saket police station and a cheating and forgery case was registered on August 25, said deputy commissioner of police (south) Atul Kumar Thakur, adding that Alam was arrested on Saturday.

“Alam spent huge amounts over a very short period using the credit cards and submitted forged cheques to pay the bills. When the cheques bounced, the

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company tried to contact him on the residential addressed he had mentioned while applying for the credit cards. However, he could not be located on those addresses,” said Thakur.

Thakur said Alam, a resident of Khanpur, studied till Class 10 and worked as a mason, fitting tiles and building false ceilings for the past three years.

He set up two private firms to get work contracts and opened seven bank accounts in the name of his family members and those working with him, passing them off as employees in his firms.

“Alam collected IDS, such as driving licences and passports, through the internet and used them to apply for credit cards after filling online applications. He took houses on rent in colonies in Lajpat Nagar and Malviya Nagar for a short while and used the addresses to get the cards issued there. Alam vacated the addresses after the credit cards were delivered,” said Thakur. To hide the money trail, he got cash after swiping at petrol pumps,

Apart from obtaining credit cards, Alam also used the forged IDS to open bank accounts and used cheques to pay the bills.

To improve his credit scores, Alam passed off relatives and friends as employees of his fictitious firms, and reported that they had high salaries. He then made fake accounts using their IDS and shifted money between these accounts to keep up the credit scores. He then secured more loans using their credit numbers.

Police said investigations are on to find out if anybody else was involved in the fraud, and his bank accounts are being examined to ascertain the number of institutions he targeted and how much he duped them of.

TO IMPROVE HIS CREDIT SCORES, ALAM PASSED OFF RELATIVES AND FRIENDS AS EMPLOYEES OF HIS FICTITIOUS FIRMS