SCAMSTERS INC.

The Delhi Police's economic offences wing on Wednesday filed its first chargesheet in the DDA housing allotment scam. The 7120 page chargesheet was filed against five accused who were arrested over a period of four months and police said a supplementary chargesheet will be filed against Suresh Kumar Meena, who was arrested recently. Filing the chargesheet against ex-DDA official M L Gautam, Laxmi Narayan Meena, Deepak Kumar, Vijay Patanjali and Raju Ram before additional chief metropolitan magistrate Digvinay Singh, the police said they were involved in fradulentaly getting a large number of DDA forms filled with fake names from the reserve category and managed to corner around 58 DDA flats for themselves. The five were charged with cheating, forgery, impersonation, using fake documents as genuine, destruction of evidence, criminal conspiracy and common intention of IPC.

The chargesheet was put up for consideration before ACMM Singh, who fixed April 9 as the day to take cognizance of the same. The court said it would provide the copy of the chargesheet to the accused on Thursday. The Economic Times warrants were also issued against the five accused for Thursday. The chargesheet delves into the details how the five allegedly got DDA forms filled from reserve category candidates belonging to Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

The first arrest in the case was made on January 9 following media reports alleging fraud in the allotment process. Laxmi Narayan Meena, a Jhunjhunu based former bank employee was arrested after successful allottee Raghubir Singh from Jhunjhunu complained to the police that he was forced to fill the application form by the accused. Subsequently, Deepak Kumar, who first approached a political leader in the capital, was arrested. Kumar was also charged in another cheating case where he allegedly got several PAN cards made using forged documents.

The chargesheet also said more than 18,000 forms under various names in reserve category were submitted by the five accused. The entire planning and execution was done by Kumar, Gautam, Suresh Meena and Patanjali. Gautam gave Kumar the idea of fraudulently obtaining flats in the DDA scheme. Gautam himself cornered 38 flats by filling more than 1800 forms under the Schedule Caste category. Most of the applications by Gautam were made from Bulandshahr, Khurja and Meerut.

The police also recorded the statements of all the 38 successful allottees. The police found the involvement of some family members of Gautam against whom court proceedings were being initiated. The statement of villagers in Jhunjhunu, Bharatpur and Udaipur who were successfully allotted flats in the present scheme were also part of the chargesheet. The allottees in Rajasthan were unaware that they were allotted flats and admitted that some people from Delhi had come to their villages and taken their signatures on DDA forms, said the chargesheet. In some cases, applicants did not even know that applications were submitted in their names.

Police said they were still examinig the role of Suresh Meena. He along with Vijay and Kumar had allehedly filled more than 3000 forms. Suresh reportedly had sold off his flat in Rohini and invested the money in the scam. Later, the three fell out over the possession of the application slip. Kumar then went on to expose the scam. Rajuram, a property dealer known to Kumar also provided Rs 9 lakh for the scam.

The chargesheet also said the police had so far not detected the involvement of any DDA official in the the scam. A report will also be submitted once the police received the GEQD report and FSL reports from Hyderabad. The server along with the software used in the draw process had been sent to Hyderbad.

Meanwhile, Gautam on Wednesday moved his bail application following the filing of the chargesheet.

Source: TOI

The CBI has recorded statements of officials of stock market regulator SEBI in the case pertaining to the multi-crore rupee accounting fraud in Satyam Computer. A CBI team in Mumbai examined the documents available with the market regulator regarding the share transactions of the IT firm, official sources said. The probe team also recorded statements of officials of leading financial management and advisory firm DSP Merrill Lynch in connection with the fudging of the account books in the scam.

The firm was appointed by the board headed by former Satyam Chairman B Ramalinga Raju following the aborted Satyam-Maytas deal, to look for a strategic partner along with a plan to increase shareholder value. However, DSP Merrill Lynch snapped its engagement with Satyam soon after the disclosure of the accounting fraud at the IT firm. The CBI is trying to understand the share transactions of the Satyam group of companies on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange, officials said.

Officials sources said the modus operandi used by the accused involved generating fake invoices, further showing the imaginary money as being pumped into the financial system, and declaring profit that was never there. The CBI had filed a 300-page chargesheet against nine people, including the company's tainted founder B Ramalinga Raju and his two brothers at a special court in Hyderabad. The accused have been chargesheeted under various sections of the IPC including criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery of valuable security, forgery for the purpose of cheating, using forged documents as genuine, falsification of accounts, and causing disappearance of evidence.

The others named in the chargesheet include the company's former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, Vice-President (Finance) G Ramakrishna, and two employees D Venkatpathi Raju and Srisailam, both in the finance wing. The chargesheet has also named two sacked auditors of Price Waterhouse -- S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas. The CBI, after registering the case on February 20, had formed a multi-disciplinary investigation team (MDIT) to probe the scam involving thousands of crores of rupees.

Source: Hindustan Times

The mastermind behind a major fake currency scam, which was unearthed a week ago, was nabbed by officials of Vadodara (rural) special operations group on Monday evening.
Raju Vanrajsinh Dhanak, living in Parth Park society on Vasna Road, was caught from near his house. Police have also seized a laptop from Raju, which they believe scamsters used to make fake notes. Till now, eight persons including a minor have been arrested in the past one week. All the arrested are educated persons.

Police, who believe a wider nexus in the conspiracy, sought Raju's remand for interrogation as they believe him to be the mastermind in the scam.
On Tuesday, a local court sent him to two-day police remand.

Source:TOI

In a first hint that key accused Ashutosh Asthana could have sung more than what he knew in the Rs 23 crore Ghaziabad judiciary PF scam case, the CBI has given a clean chit to a district judge saying the allegations against him were baseless.

District judge Subhash Chander had made an emotional plea to a bench headed by justice Arijit Pasayat for speedy conclusion of the probe against him saying it had cast a shadow on his unblemished 33-year track record and jeopardised his chances of elevation to the Allahabad High Court. Complying with the Bench's directive to file response to the senior-most district judge's role in the PF scam, the CBI submitted a sealed cover report saying it had verified all allegations levelled against Chander and found no incriminating evidence linking him to the scam.

Solicitor general G E Vahanvati had told the court during the last hearing that though the CBI was minutely examining the allegations against the judges, it had not found anything substantial against many of them. Asthana, a former treasury officer, had allegedly confessed how, with the tacit approval of district judges, money was illegally withdrawn from the provident fund accounts of class III and IV employees of the Ghaziabad district court.

He claimed that 35 judges including one in Supreme Court, 11 serving and retired judges in various HCs and 23 district judges had played some role in the scam. The UP police, after recording Asthana's confessional statement, had expressed its inability to probe a scam where the accused were judges and posted in several states. This led to the SC entrusting the investigations to CBI. The CBI, in its status report, said the UP police had arrested many people and made them accused in the case without verifying their actual role in the scam. That is why, it said, the agency had decided not to oppose the bail of 20 of the 48 accused.

Significantly, it sought transfer of the hearing from Ghaziabad district court to Delhi on the ground that it was not "getting desired cooperation'' from the judiciary there in fast-tracking the hearings.

Source:TOI

Increased vigil on lodges across the city, in view of the elections, resulted in the busting of an international credit card fraud on Monday.

Three of the six-member gang were arrested and 85 cloned credit cards of various banks along with a skimmer, laptop, jewellery and other valuables was seized from them. The gang had swiped the credit cards to the tune of Rs 1.50 lakh with the connivance of shopkeepers. The three accused are — Rajender Laxman Swamy Bagal, a travel agent and event organiser from Nasik in Maharashtra, Subramanyam Harish, a realtor from Bangalore and Yerramshetty Nagaraj, an office assistant in a private company at Chennai.

According to police, the kingpin, Balakrishnan alias Bala of Chennai (absconding), got the data of credit cards from Malayasia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and other south East Asian countries through his sources. He also acquired the 14- digit bar code on the magnetic strip of the credit card and used to transfer the stolen data into the blank credit cards.

“Balakrishna obtained plain blank cards and pasted the logos and other details of the banks by pasting and embossing on the cards and he cloned the credit cards of the foreign credit card holders. He wrote the data obtained through Net through a skimmer and use it through his followers at major cities luring them with commission of 10 per cent on swiped amount,’’ Task Force DCP V B Kamalasan Reddy said.

The accused had a few contacts in the City and were using the credit cards to withdraw money from the accounts of card holders of other countries in connivance with shopkeepers, the DCP said. ``We have identified some of the shops from where the cloned cards were used and action would be taken against them,’’ Task Force inspector Shyam Babu, who nabbed the trio, said.

Balakrishna along with two others left for Chennai to get some more credit cards and therefore escaped the police dragnet. “The scam might be running into crores and the arrest of Balakrishna would bring into light the amount of fraud committed by the gang,’’ he added.

Police said that credit card cloning or skimming is a technique where someone obtains the credit card details of a customer, copies them onto a bogus card and begins using the credit card causing losses to the rightful owner.

Often the international credit card fraudsters target foreign customers credit cards as:
1) Credit card limit is more when compared to the credit cards offered by Indian banks.
2) Detection of fraud is almost impossible.

Source: ExpressBuzz

Urvish Bhatt, e-scamster and mastermind of a fake online investment company that cheated over 1,500 investors in the state, had
purchased large chunk of property in Vadodara city, officials of Bharuch local crime branch (LCB) said.

Bharuch LCB had caught Bhatt from Dabhoi a month ago and learned of these purchases during his ongoing interrogation. They visited Vadodara to investigate his network. LCB police inspector BS Agrawat, who arrived with his team in the city on Sunday, said Bhatt purchased a bungalow in Marutidham society on Harni Road and also bought a luxurious farmhouse at Kundhela near city.

The scam had come to light after a Bharuch Bank employee, Kirtan Akruwala, registered a complaint two months ago. Over 1,500 investors across the state were found to have been cheated through the website. Unofficially, the fraud figure is placed at Rs 100 crore.

The online firm lured many investors with a promise of an ROI of 30 per cent within a month. Police arrested Hemant Patel, Ravi Maheswari, Harshad Rana, Mahesh Pathari, Mehul Patel and Chandrasinh Parmar, all from Bharuch, and associates of Bhatt, who had appointed 80 agents in Vadodara city and the number exceeded 600 in central Gujarat.

Source:TOI

Orange woods or fraud woods i really think there is no difference between both of them. I booked a furniture reading one of their ads in newspaper and even after of two months there is no news about it at all. Whenever you make a call or visit their showroom they just keep saying it will be delivered today , tomorrow , this week etc.., but the truth of the matter is that they just want to create news in the market and nothing else. I don’t think they have successfully completed any order till date. They have a set of people who are so inept. They are completely misleading the customers and is there any way to action against these frauds so that it helps other people getting into this trap. There is absolutely no responsible person in that company to look into customers problems. All you get is a group of boys who look like they have been hired cheaply for less salary.

- mahantesh_n (From MouthShut.com)

For more COMPLAINTS on Orange Furniture, Orange Property and Orange Electronics, log on to http://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Orange_Woods_Furniture_-_Bangalore-925080389.html

Five persons lodged a complaint with the Chennai suburban commissioner on Wednesday alleging that a Nandambakkam-based company had
cheated them of jobs after taking huge sums of money.

According to J Srinivasan, one of the victims, he came to know through a consultancy that Info Ark technologies in Nandambakkam was giving contracts for BPO outsourcing work. He approached the firm, enquired about the details and applied, Like him, 22 others also applied.

Srinivasan entered into a formal agreement with the chief executive officer of the firm, Karthikeyan, in September last year after paying Rs one lakh. "Many others started applying from July. The job was to fill pharma forms coming from the US and send it back in a given format. Of the total income we would get, 10% had to be given to the company. The officer said we would be getting the forms within a week," said Srinivasan.

However, nothing happened till January this year and they kept saying that the forms had not come. "In January, CEO Karthikeyan called all of us for a meeting and said he had given the money to a third party. When we asked him to introduce us to that person, there was no response. So we asked for a refund," said Saravanan, another complainant.

He said that while some had invested Rs one lakh, others had invested more. "People from Andhra Pradesh and Bangalore also applied. The total money involved could be around Rs 25 lakh. But after we asked for refund, Karthikeyan went absconding," alleged Saravanan.

When contacted, Karthikeyan said he had left the company some months ago. "I recruited some of the applicants and the money had been refunded to some of them. Info Ark is now holding discussions to repay the remaining persons," he said.

Source: TOI

This scam is more dreadful than cancer. The state health department
has unearthed an anti-cancer drug racket where crucial medicines
for treatment of the disease were not only illegally manufactured, but re-bottled and sold after expiry dates.

Shockingly, some of the illegal drugs manufactured were not traced at all. Initial investigation has proved that these drugs have hit the market and consumed by patients. “It is difficult for us to assess at this stage if there has been loss of lives due to consumption of these spurious drugs. Since the drugs have been sold not just in Karnataka, we have to involve neighbouring states as well,’’ official sources told The Times of India.

Though section 28 (A) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules allows manufacturers to use the facility of another company to produce the drug, it must be clearly labelled along with the batch names of the drugs. “But during investigation we were shocked to find that the companies whose names were labelled on the anti-cancer drug had not manufactured that batch of drugs at all. As of now there are four such companies whose names the mafia has used illegally. All the companies denied having produced these anti-cancer drugs,’’ sources said.

Last week, a team of officers from Maharashtra came to Bangalore for investigations. The department is doing a thorough inquiry into the number of outlets that sell anti-cancer drugs.

Source:TOI

Scamsters seem to be giving bankers a tough time. After the benami account scam, banks now have to deal with a new kind of cyber crime
called phishing.

For the uninitiated, phishing is a fradulent way of acquiring credit card, personal identification numbers and banking passwords using the internet and e-mail by masquerading as a trusted source.

ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank, filed a complaint with the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) police station on February 7 after its customers complained about being asked to validate or confirm their account details through a seemingly innocuous e-mail ID (icici@icicibank.com).

When the cyber crime cell began investigating the case, they found that a scamster had managed to get hold of customer details and used it to purchase goods on the net.

The ICICI Bank website had also been cloned. At the cloned site, www.iciciibank.net, you could buy virtually everything, from travel to financial services, gifts and computers, and it also offered free online gambling and education facilities.

."We are still investigating the matter," said a senior cyber
crime official.

"Within two hours of the crime, our crisis management team blocked the clone website," said ICICI Bank spokesperson. ICICI Bank claims it has already informed the RBI about the net fraud.

The bank claims it has sent out mailers to those customers who had received the fraudulent e-mails alerting them not to update sensitive account information like their debit card numbers, credit card numbers, user IDs, and passwords by clicking on an e-mail link or by visiting a website. They also informed bank customers that they could continue to transact with ICICI Bank via the authentic website, www.icicibank.com.

After word got around in banking circles, HDFC Bank took premptive action. On February 8, it sent mailers to all its customers alerting them about the dangers of phishing.

Source:TOI

About 60 more cases over malpractice or fraud in electoral registrations were filed in Bellary, on Saturday, taking the total number of cases against people seeking to register themselves twice over or under false addresses to 90.

Meanwhile the applications on Form 6 (for new registrations) which was in the order of 1,000 to 1,400 per day in Bellary City, since February 2, is said to have dropped to 228 on March 20- the day after the Election Commission authorities undertook a spot inspection.

In Bangalore, Chief Electoral Officer M N Vidyashankar said that the 90 cases followed the verification of some 3,000 of the 11,000 applications that were rejected, he said. The remaining are also being scrutinised, he said.

Source: Expressbuzz

The first list of 21 candidates announced by the BJP on Tuesday has many surprises that even many BJP leaders in the state find difficult to fathom.

The most striking surprise is that the party has fielded three candidates who figured prominently in the multi-crore cooperative banks scams, which left thousands of depositors penniless.

Two of the three candidates were arrested and jailed for a few months till they were granted bails by the courts.

The three candidates are: C R Patil from Navasari, Deepak Sathi from Anand and Prabhatsinh Chauhan from Panchmahal Lok Sabha seats.

"I just cannot believe that such scamsters can be BJP candidates in Gujarat," a senior BJP leader said ruefully. He added that this shows that the party considers only criterion of winnability of the candidate and nothing else.

However, state BJP general secretary Vijay Rupani has defended the party's move of fielding such candidates saying that none of them are convicted by any court.

"Allegations were raised against them but no court has convicted any of the three candidates for their alleged involvement," Rupani told reporters.

Source: Zee News