Mumbai News: Two Men Sentenced To 5 Years For Cheating Shinhan Bank Of ₹68 Crore Using Fake Identities

The metropolitan magistrate court on Thursday sentenced two men to five years' imprisonment for cheating Shinhan Bank of Rs68.22 crore.

The additional chief metropolitan magistrate RD Chavan has convicted Raza Sayyad Nawaz Naqvi alias Santoshkumar Sitaram Prasad, 38, resident of Uttar Pradesh and Varun Rana alias Santoshkumar Prasad alias Jugendrasing Mamraj Sing, 41, resident of New Delhi. While the third accused, Sumit Verma, 32, resident of Himachal Pradesh, was acquitted for want of evidence, the two other accused, Anuj Kumar Chand alias Ratnesh and Sunita Hareram Devi remained absconding.

As per the prosecution case that was first lodged with NM Joshi Marg police station and later transferred to Economic Offence Wing (EOW) on the complaint of Shinhan Bank on December 30, 2020. The bank alleged that two firms ID Technologies Pvt Ltd and Liqus Tradex Pvt held accounts with their bank in Mumbai and Delhi branch respectively. Naqvi presented as Santosh Kumar, director of ID Technologies while Rana represented as Jugendrasing, director of Liqus Tradex to open the account.

In November 2020, the bank received a notice from the Cyber Cell, Odisha Police, regarding a chit fund fraud case. An internal inquiry following the notice revealed that the documents used to open accounts by two firms were forged. Further investigation found high-value domestic transactions inconsistent with the firms' profiles, prompting the bank to report the matter to the RBI and Mumbai Police.

The investigating agencies had at that time freezed around 93 accounts which were used to deposit money and transfer the same to the accounts of these two firms.

The public prosecutor PS Patil examined 22 witnesses including bank officials and people whose identity cards were used to open the accounts.