MS Dhoni and Abhishek Bachchan’s PAN Details Used for Fraud, 5 People Arrested

GG News Bureau

New Delhi, 3rd March. In a strange case of cyber fraud, a group of fraudsters reportedly procured PAN details of several Bollywood actors and cricketers from their GST Identification Numbers which are available online, and got credit cards issued in their names from Pune-based fintech startup ‘One Card’.

Abhishek Bachchan, Shilpa Shetty, Madhuri Dixit, Emraan Hashmi, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are among the celebrities whose names and details were used by the fraudsters, according to Shahadra Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Rohit Meena.

“Since investigation into the matter is underway, we cannot comment further on it,” Meena said.

The company realized the fraud later, but not before the fraudsters used some of these cards to purchase goods worth Rs. 21.32 lakh. It immediately notified the Delhi Police, who swooped in and arrested five of them.

The five accused, identified as Puneet, Mohd Asif, Sunil Kumar, Pankaj Mishar and Vishwa Bhaskar Sharma, acted in close coordination to defraud the company in a very unusual manner, Delhi Police sources said.

“After arrest, when they were interrogated, they disclosed their unique modus operandi. They used to get GST details of these celebrities from Google. They were very well aware that the first two digits of GSTIN are state code and the next 10 digits are PAN number,” one of the sources said.

The source added, “Since the celebrities date of birth are available on Google, these two — PAN and date of birth — complete the PAN details. They got the PAN cards remade fraudulently putting their own pictures on it so that during video verification, their looks match with the photo available on PAN/Aadhaar card.”

For instance, the PAN card of Abhishek Bachchan had his PAN and date of birth but a picture of one of the accused.

They forged their Aadhaar details in the same way. They applied for credit cards once they had this information. During video verification, they were asked questions about their financial activities, which they easily answered because they had all such information from CIBIL.

According to the source, they were aware that these celebrities may have good CIBIL scores, which would improve their chances of getting credit cards.

“Also, they were aware that the online verification system cannot identify Abhishek Bachchan as a film star. So the picture of accused Pankaj Mishra with Abhishek Bachchan’s PAN and Aadhaar details worked well to get a card issued,” he added.

Further investigation is underway, and it is suspected that they used a similar method to obtain credit cards from other banks and financial institutions.

According to police sources, they spent several months conducting online research to find ways to exploit flaws in the online verification and issuance of credit cards.

FPL Technologies Private Limited of Pune issues “One Card,” a contactless metal credit card, along with a virtual rendition of the same in the One Card and One Score App “so that the customer can use it for any online or app-based transactions or purchases,” according to the company’s police complaint.

The company also claimed that these fraudsters approached the company via their app, uploading details such as their PAN and Aadhaar number, in order to get credit cards issued in their names.

The credit limit of the card used to be approved after “taking into account the bureau details, that is, the information of the customer stored with the credit information companies, for example CIBIL, to establish the genuineness and authenticity of the applicant and its credentials,” the complaint said.

It added, “They left the original PAN and Aadhaar number and the date of the birth intact and uploaded the forged PAN card/Aadhaar card on our app. Accordingly, our system fetched the bureau details based on the original PAN and suggested a credit limit.”

The company’s complaint stated that by misusing the same, “the accused boarded with us by uploading their real time selfie which matched with the photograph on the forged PAN card/Aadhaar card. Accordingly, credit cards were issued to the accused persons with an approved credit limit of ₹ 10 lakh each.”

“The approved credit limit was exhausted/withdrawn by the accused within a span of a week and nothing has been repaid to us,” the FIR said.

It added, “We came to know about this fraud when our system got an alert that multiple on boarding attempts were being made using a single device. To simplify, the accused tried to onboard with us using a total of 83 PAN details from seven devices.”

The company also delivered some physical credit cards to the addresses mentioned on some of the documents.