SCAMSTERS INC.

The Madras high court has ordered notices to the state government and an inspector-general of police-cadre official, on a writ petition seeking CBI probe into the Gold Quest scam and the alleged police complicity with the scamsters.

A division bench comprising Justice P K Misra and Justice K Chandru on a writ petition filed by R Ramesh Kumar. The petitioner contended that four police officers, including inspector-general Thukkaiandi had conspired to conceal evidence collected against the multi-level marketing company by the Sembium police.

He said some of the officials involved in the investigation undermined the probe and suppressed information pertaining to the case which related to lakhs of common people who had lost money in the Gold Quest scam.

Investigating official whittled down the case for extraneous considerations, the petitioner alleged, adding that "name-sake arrests" were made to make the investors believe that the investigation was proceeding on right direction.

Source: TOI

A broker, the fifth co-accused in the fake stamp paper scam, that was detected in the city a fortnight ago, was arrested from the city
on Saturday. Nimesh alias Bijal Soni, 22, was the man who got the scamsters their customers, officials of crime branch, who arrested him said.

A criminal court here remanded Soni to a four-day police custody on Saturday and sent the earlier four accused Anil Panat, Shailaja Patil, Bhavin Patel and Hemant Bhatt to judicial custody as their duration of police remand got over on Saturday.

Soni, living in Wagheswari Bhuvan of Fatehpura crossroads, had been working for Panat, the mastermind, for the last two years, officers said. Soni has also confessed to obtaining loans of Rs 50,000 each from the Raopura branch of Punjab National Bank and Alkapuri branch of HSBC bank by presenting fake documents.

White collar criminals of the city were his major clients. Apart from fake stamp papers, they also bought fake electricity bills for Rs 500, RTO registration books for Rs 1,000, fake bank passbook for Rs 500. Soni also sold bank statements for Rs 150 a page and corporation's registration documents for Rs 500. Soni charged commissions from the customers. Crime branch officials are trying to track Soni's customers, who he took to Panat.

Source: TOI

The Indian Air force officers have blown the lid off a major recruitment scam. The worry is that the racked could have spilled over to the recruitment to the Army, Navy and even the Indian Military Academy.

Exclusive information available with TIMES NOW reveals that lure of money has threatened to penetrate the coveted ranks of the Indian Air force. A recruitment racket - run by a ring of scamsters was recently busted in Madhya Pradesh, promising candidates a career in the Indian Air force.

"While correcting the papers, we found that performance of few of the candidates was exceptionally high, which is quite unusual by any standards. Then we questioned those candidates specifically subject-wise in the interview and they could not perform as well," Wing Commander Ashok Chaturvedi said on the scam.

The modus operandi was simple. First the fake candidates entered the examination hall with forged identities and crack the paper in 30 minutes. They would then walk-out and handover the answers to 'real' candidates. And finally, the real candidates come back to the examination hall to give the exam.

"They used to contact candidates that could pay good money, upto rupees three lakhs and keep their original documents...it was sort of a contract," Bhopal superintendent Jaydeep Prasad told.

Shockingly, sources suggest that these scamsters have organised rackets across the defence services, including entry into the hallowed Indian Military Academy. The question loom large as to how many undeserving candidates are being trained to defend India's borders in the future.

Source: TimesNow

A fresh miscellaneous petition was filed in the High Court against the Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) seeking direction to register a criminal case against it for the alleged fraud in implementing the project. The Airport Authority Employees Union stated in its petition that BIAL had to be prosecuted for committing fraud by filing a false counter in the court.

In the counter filed in April, 2008, BIAL stated that it had invested Rs.2470 crore on the project and its concessionaires like hoteliers had invested about Rs.2000 crore. By accepting the counter filed by BIAL, the court had refused to stay the closure of HAL airport.

Interestingly, the annual returns of the BIAL, details of which were gathered by the petitioner, show that the total investment for the airport project was Rs.1700 crore.

The petitioner further submitted that the claim of other concessionaires like hoteliers having invested about Rs.2,800 crore within the airport hub had not been substantiated in the annual returns filed by BIAL. “BIAL is not only misleading the court but also misleading the public at large by taking into possession a vast land in Devanahalli,” the petitioner argued.

Source: Expres Buzz

After being on the run for months together, the head of National Institute of Management (NIM), Ashraf Khan, surrendered before the
city police on Wednesday. Khan had disappeared from the city after cops raided NIM premises in Alkapuri and Karelibaug and busted a bogus certificate scam in December last year.

Ashraf had earlier applied for bail in Gujarat High Court but it was rejected following which he surrendered before the police. "We have arrested him. Khanhas been remanded to police custody for seven days. His arrest will help us in investigating the case thoroughly and catch hold of more scamsters," said DL Jhala, Sayajigunj police inspector.

The cops had already arrested former ABVP leader Kaushal Dave who working as assistant manager at NIM after the scam came to light last year. The management of Lokseva Foundation Trust-run NIM was found selling fake degree certificates and marksheets. The cops had seized 356 fake degree certificates and 637 marksheets from the institute's Alkapuri branch and around 100 fake documents were recovered from Karelibaug branch of the institute.

Officials say the institute could have issued over 2,000 fake certificates till date. The seized degrees include those for MBA, hotel management and engineering courses. The cops had unearthed the scam through a decoy, who posed as Bipinchandra Patel, a class VII pass out wireman and approached NIM officials. Patel managed to get a master's degree in mechanical engineering without appearing in any exam but paying Rs 30,000 fees.

Source: TOI

Mehul Patel, prime accused in an online fraud, whereby scamsters duped thousands of locals by promising them returns on their

investment, was remanded to four days of police custody by a local court on Tuesday.

Local crime branch police officials also raided Patel's house in Bharuch and impounded three luxury cars worth Rs 15 lakh, four laptops and pen drives from there.

Apart from Patel, five accused are already in police custody, while police have started their hunt for Urvish Patel of Vadodara, who is suspected to be the mastermind of the scam by creating www.safeatom.com website.

An official of Bharuch DCB said, "We expect to unearth more scams, wherein locals were duped of crores, during Mehul's interrogation."

Source: TOI

The principal sessions judge for CBI cases on Monday sentenced eight persons, six of them employees of Food Corporation of India and
their relatives, for three years rigorous imprisonment after they were convicted in a medical reimbursement scam. The accused, Sukumaran Nair, M Shankaran, P T Easwaran, M Anbalagan, X Arokianathan, B Gunasekaran, all working in clerical positions in FCI and their relatives S Gnanamoorthy and S Rajaram were directed to also pay fines between Rs 35,000 to Rs 55,000.

According to the prosecution, the accused forged rubber stamps of several government hospitals, prescription pads of doctors and cash bills of pharmacies to submit 187 fraudulent medical reimbursement bills in their names and those of other employees. The prosecution argued that the accused thus cheated FCI, causing wrongful loss to the organisation.

The fraud was exposed in 1988 after the company management lodged a complaint with the anti-corruption wing of CBI in Chennai. CBI found that the employees created bills for non-existent drugs for unknown diseases and forged prescriptions of non-existent doctors. "All the accused were equally involved in the case. They planned things meticulously and had a huge collection of fake rubber stamps of various hospitals," a CBI official said. They even submitted medical reimbursement bills in the names of non-existent employees using these bogus bills.

"They entered fancy amounts in bogus bills in the name of several medical shops. It was their greed that exposed them. Otherwise the fraud would have continued unnoticed," the official added.

Though the CBI filed the chargesheet in this case in 1988 itself, the trial of the case was delayed. "There were eight accused in the case and all had to appear before the court together during trial. However, they never appeared together, causing the delay. Some of them also approached courts and got stay orders, which we had to counter and get vacated," the official added.

After the trial, principal sessions judge K Naganathan held the accused responsible for the fraud. He then sentenced them to three years rigorous imprisonment. He also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on prime accused Sukumaran Nair, Rs 55,000 each on accused number two to six and Rs 35,000 on accused number seven and eight.

Source: TOI

Several residents of Pallikaranai, most of them women, filed a complaint with the suburban police on Sunday saying they were cheated by
a medical store owner of the area who ran a chit fund scheme. Rajeshwaran and his family, the complant said, had cheated 500 people of Rs 1.5 crore.

The victims, including some from Velachery stated that every month they deposited amounts ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000 with Rajeshwaran. In the chit-fund system, subscribers are promised high returns at the end of a certain period of time. The only guarantee of high returns given by the fund collector is oral.

Rajeshwaran, for a while, scrupulously paid the returns every few months and managed to increase his customer base. On January 22, some depositors went to collect their returns and were asked to come back on January 28 as Rajeshwaran had to go to Nagercoil. They returned on January 28 and found his shop and house locked. Rajeshwaran, his wife Lakshmi and daughter Kalaiarasi were missing. They couldn't be reached over the phone either.

The depositors then approached the suburban police.

Source:TOI

The CBI has registered a case against a former Union Bank of India official in Bangalore and two others for allegedly committing fraud to the tune of Rs 11 crores.
The trio, including a former branch manager of Union Bank of India, Avenue road branch in Bangalore along with chairman and director of a private company, were alleged to have fraudulently availed credit facilities and presented fake supplier bills.

" They committed breach of trust, cheating, forgery, criminal misconduct and used the forged documents as genuine to cause wrongful gain for themselves and wrongful loss to the bank to the tune of Rs 11 crores,"the CBI spokesperson said here in a release today.

The agency after taking the opinion by the Advisory Board for Banking, Commercial and Financial Frauds, took up the case under relevant sections of IPC against the trio and few others.

CBI officials conducted searches on the official and residential premises of the accused at Bangalore, Jabalpur, Kolkata and Doddaballapur (Karnatka) and recovered incriminating documents.

Source: PTI

At least 105 people, including some students, were arrested from Jaipur and Bhopal allegedly for leaking question papers of a Railway Recruitment Board examination scheduled for Sunday.

The Railway Recruitment Board Ajmer has postponed its scheduled examination for Assistant Station Master (ASM) and about 105 persons including aspiring candidates have been detained from Jaipur, Rajasthan ATS chief Kapil Garg said in Jaipur.

"In a joint operation with Rajasthan Special Operations Group and Bhopal Police, 112 people have been arrested in connection with paper leak of the RRB examination. While 14 gang members and 93 aspirants were arrested from Jaipur, rest were arrested from Bhopal," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) STF of UP Amitabh Yash told reporters in Lucknow.

Yash said that information was being received that a well connected gang was active across the country in leaking question papers of examinations conducted by the RRB.

The SSP said that acting on the information, raids were carried out by the STF in Jaipur and Bhopal with the help of the local police.

"During a raid at a motel in Jaipur 14 members of a gang involved in the racket and 93 aspirants were arrested and question papers were recovered. Similarly in Bhopal four gang members, besides, aspirants were arrested," he said.

"The gang adopted a unique modus operandi. Instead of providing question papers to the aspirants, they used to ask the aspirants to gather at one place on the eve of examination. There the aspirants were asked to learn the question paper. On the examination day, the aspirants were dropped at the centre," Yash added.

He said that the gang members included some former and current railway employees.

"While the gang has its base in Bihar, majority of the aspirants arrested during the two operations also hail from the same state," he said.

"We are still interrogating the people involved as the gang is big in size with its area of operation extending across the country," he added.

He said that three months back a similar racket was busted in Allahabad in which 175 people were arrested.

As many as 75,000 candidates were scheduled to appear in the test to be held today at five districts in Rajasthan including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Ajmer and Bikaner.

The examination had to postpone due to some unavoidable circumstances and a notice to this effect has been pasted at all the examination centres, L R Meena, Senior Divisional Personnel Officer, Jaipur division-NW Railway told reporters.

Source: Zee News

A total of 110 people have been arrested in Uttar Pradesh in connection with the leakage of Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) examination paper, police said on Sunday.

While 16 of them were charged with masterminding the racket, the others were said to be candidates who were to take the examinations. Twelve arrests were made in Jaipur and four in Bhopal.

The RRB examination, organised by the Ajmer Recruitment Board for the posts of assistant station master, was scheduled on Sunday. The Special Task Force (STF) unearthed the scandal a few hours before the exam began.

The STF unearthed a similar scam in December and arrested 286 people. One of them was Bedi Ram, a ticket exaAminer.

"However, Bedi Ram soon came out on bail and we were constantly getting information that he was again involved in a similar scam," additional director general of Police Brij Lal told reporters here.

The police also recovered a few copies of the original question paper and a large number of solved answer sheets from Jaipur and Bhopal.

Source: Sify

The detection of crime branch (DCB) unearthed a major scam related to bogus stamp papers, rubber stamps of banks and government,
vehicle registration books and company's letter pads on Thursday. Two persons were arrested in the scam that was being run on a major scale by the residents of city's Mehta Pole.

According to DCB officials, more arrests are likely in the scam that was unearthed after one of the key persons was nabbed on Wednesday. "We had received a tip-off that a person having bogus documents of regional transport office (RTO) will pass from Raopura area on Wednesday. We kept a watch in the area and nabbed the person identified as Bhavin Patel," said Karim Polra, DCB police inspector.

"Patel revealed the names of key conspirators Anil Panat and Shailaja Pail, who used to prepare fake stamp papers, property papers, RC books and rubber stamps with the help of computers and some equipments," Polra added. While Panat has been arrested, Shailaja is absconding.

Police recovered 32 stamp papers worth about Rs 1.94 lakh, 24 rubber stamps of sub-registrar office, 25 RTO rubber stamps, seven notary rubber stamps, 22 stamps of nationalised banks, M S University's blank pay-slips and VMC rubber stamps. The accused used to provide these bogus documents to people for a price. They used to even generate bogus bills and receipts that many may have used in government dealings.

Interestingly, Anil was arrested in a similar case about one and half years back by the Gorwa police. However, he was released on bail as he was accused of small-time scam, said police.

Source: TOI

It was just not their day -- Wednesday saw five con men land in the
police net.

Genius with many powerful fathers Sukas, a PUC drop-out and ace fraud, cheated at least 16 companies and persons over the last two years. At 19, he had already amassed over Rs 57 lakh.

All he did was drop big political names and assure industrialists of mega deals from the state and Union government. Even before the deal process began, Sukas would collect his commission and vanish.

At times, he was the son of Union minister T R Balu and at others, of Karnataka revenue minister Karunakar Reddy. He would variously introduce himself as Rahul, DK, Rohith, Ravikumar and so on. Fluent in English, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu, Sukas even had his parents' blessing for his `business'.

His modus operandi: track tenders put out by the Karnataka government on its website. Contact suppliers and negotiate for a commission to get the tender sanctioned to them. Once the money was transferred to his father's account, he would vanish.

Sukas would also hire luxury cars from travel agencies. When he came across a potential victim, he would offer to sell the car for a throwaway price, collect the advance and disappear. Neither would he return the car. He was adept at avoiding agencies by changing home frequently.

When the police nabbed Sukas, his parents, Chandrashekhar and Mala, went underground, said South-East DCP B N S Reddy. Earlier, Sukas was arrested by the Hulimavu police for forging the land documents of a woman. This time, he confessed to have cheated 16 persons and made a whopping Rs 57 lakh. Sukas was tracked through his mobile calls, the DCP said.

Source: TOI

An unlicensed software company that had been operating out of Bengal’s IT hub for three years without the authorities noticing is being investigated for cheating campus recruits of their security deposits and salaries.

Trainees of INFOGEN Global filed an FIR with Bidhannagar East police station on Tuesday against “chief visionary” Anirban Ghosh and his management team for criminal breach of trust and fraud. The company, which has four offices in Salt Lake, had recruited them as software developers last year for an annual pay package of Rs 84,000 each but hasn’t paid them a rupee so far.

Each of these trainees, either BTech or MCA degree-holders from engineering colleges in Bengal and elsewhere, had to deposit Rs 50,000 each to the company as “refundable security bond” and commit themselves to working there for two years.

Santu Das, one of the duped trainees, said he paid the company Rs 50,000 on March 10 last year (Andhra Bank draft number 722010) but did not get his joining letter until December. “I have been working since December 15 but haven’t received my first salary yet.”

Santu’s colleagues who had joined earlier than him haven’t received anything either.“Everything about the company looked more dubious with each day I spent in the office at Rashmi Building in Sector V. We were first told that our salaries were not being disbursed because projects had dried up. The management next announced that the impact of the downturn was so serious that our company would have to be merged with a firm called D’zire Communication,” recalled Minajur Rehman.

Exit Ghosh, enter Prosenjit Roy.

Roy, the head of D’zire Communication, told the trainees that he would be in charge from then on and would clear their dues soon. When post-dated cheques for Rs 7,000 each were distributed among them on January 21, the recruits thought the crisis was over. All the cheques, drawn on Ramkrishnapur Cooperative Bank in Howrah and dated February 2, bounced.

Some of the trainees filed a general diary at the Sector V police outpost on Friday when they found the senior management and mid-level executives missing from the company’s offices. They registered a second complaint three days later but the police allegedly didn’t act on it.

“We decided to file an FIR on finding our two first-floor offices under lock and key,” said Mintu Nath, sitting on the staircase with his hands on his head.

S.A. Ahmed, the chairman of the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority, confirmed that INFOGEN Global wasn’t licensed but couldn’t say why no action had been taken against it.

State IT minister Debes Das said the company had approached him for land a year ago but he didn’t entertain the request. “I scanned the list of registered IT companies on my laptop and didn’t find its name. When the company came to me again, I asked for the annual audit report. It didn’t get back to me,”he told.

Das said he heard the company’s name again when his office received enquiries about it in the past few months. “I asked my staff to warn anyone who asked about the company not to join it.”

Ghosh and his wife Debarchana Mitra Ghosh, the “director of people management”, were unavailable for comment. “They are absconding but we will arrest them,” said Sujoy Chanda, the additional superintendent of police.

Source: The Telegraph

"BJP is the mother of corruption. Corruption starts from the home of the state chief minister. The BJP workers follow the path of corruption thereafter," alleged opposition leader in the legislative council V S Ugrappa.

Speaking to reporters here on Friday January 30, he said that the BJP leaders, right from its once national president Bangaru Lakshaman to MLA Sampangi, have been involved with several corruption scams. Because of the Loakyukta raid, Sampangi has been caught, he added.

During the BJP tenure, scams running into Rs 30,000 crore have taken place. Allegation of corruption has been levelled by senior leader Bhairon Singh Shekhawat against Rajastan ex-cheif minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia. Karnataka has witnessed scams right from mining to transfer business, he charged.

Sampangi was caught red-handed while accepting bribe to settle a criminal dispute. Likewise, BJP legislators and ministers have been accepting illegal gratifications for affecting transfers. They are using their clout for corrupt practices instead of protecting the law and order situation in the country, he accused.

"Under the BJP rule, Bangalore has witnessed 25 murders in 22 days and law and order machinery has collapsed in the entire state. The government has been conducting the programme of campaign against terrorism, instead of conducting campaign against its own corrupt practices," he ridiculed. He demanded action against the BJP legislators who visited the Lokayukta office in connection with Sampangi case on Friday and behaving irresponsibly there. The Congress will be keenly watching the steps being taken by the BJP in this case, and will initiate steps if the government fails to handle it properly, he warned.

Source: Daijiworld

An Indian-American known for his mega Bollywood shows in the U.S. has been sentenced to seven-year imprisonment in a $33 million mortgage fraud case.

Vijay K. Taneja, 48, was found guilty by a Virginia Court of defrauding four major U.S. banks — Franklin Bank, First Tennessee Bank, Wells Fargo Bank and EMC Mortgage Co — and also cheating the Indian-American community with phoney home loans.

The U.S. District Judge Claude M Hilton also ordered Mr. Taneja to pay $33 million in restitution to these four financial institutions.

Source: The Hindu(PTI)

Quick on the heels of the Satyam scam that also had repercussions on the functioning of Maytas company being run by the family of the ex-chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ramalinga Raju, the state government has cancelled the contracts awarded by it to Maytas Company, relating to the construction of Shimoga and Gulbarga airports.

This information was given by the state chief minister B S Yeddyurappa during his chat with the press at his home cum office, 'Krishna' here on Wednesday January 28, after the high-level meeting gave its assent for the above step. The step had to be taken as the government had no faith that Maytas Company would be able to complete the contracted work within the allotted time, he explained.

"The responsibility of undertaking the process of re-tendering work has been entrusted to the chief secretary. He will soon convene a meeting of officials and take suitable decisions," he explained.

Source: Daijiaworld