2 conmen held for duping 300 people in Faridabad
GURUGRAM: The Faridabad police have arrested two men for allegedly duping more than 300 people on the pretext of providing them loan under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), a creditlinked subsidy programme which provides loan for setting up a business.
The suspects, who were arrested from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, have been identified as Ajit Thakur (27) from Bihar, and his aide Nitin Singh of Uttar Pradesh.
The fraud came to light after a woman working for the suspects approached the police and told them how she fell prey to a lucrative offer and joined their consultancy firm located in Sector 7, Faridabad. The victims whom the woman had approached to offer the loan schemes, as part of her job, were now threatening her for life as she had convinced them to pay advance processing fee for the loan, the police said.
According to the police, they received a complaint in December last year from the woman, Megha Singh.
“During my interview for the job at the consultant’s office in Faridabad, the two introduced themselves as consultants providing loans for setting up businesses. One of them offered me job and an incentive of 15% on the total loan amount I will get through my contacts,” Megha told HT. The police said the suspects had taken an office on rent through fake documents and used to take an advance commission of 10% on loan amount. They also used to take ₹1,150 as file charges.
Faridabad police commissioner KK Rao said that the suspects had placed advertisements and had introduced themselves as directors of ‘Jan Kalyan Finance Consultant’. “After Megha told her parents about the lucrative incentive, her father also joined the same office. They were paid a salary of ₹10,000 each apart from the incentive,” he said.
The police said that Megha and her father started approaching their near and dear ones who were interested in taking loan. “They used to tell people that her office was offering a loan of ₹3 lakh under the aegis of PMEGP and that an approval letter would be sent once a nominal ‘security amount’ was deposited,” Rao said, adding that a subsidy was also part of the offer.