Bengaluru city police recently arrested four people from Gujarat for defrauding Rs 12.5 crore from credit card payments company CRED.
The alleged mastermind, Vaibhav Pitadiya (33), a relationship manager at Axis Bank in Gujarat, was among those arrested.
The police recovered Rs 1.28 crore in cash, two mobile phones, and fake CIB forms during the investigation. "Efforts are on to recover the remaining defrauded amount. They forged signatures and seals on Corporate Internet Banking (CIB) forms. Using these forged documents, the accused gained unauthorised control over the internet banking credentials of the company’s accounts and transferred Rs 12.50 crore to 17 mule accounts in Gujarat and Rajasthan," the official said.
Pitadiya discovered that CRED’s nodal account processed daily transactions exceeding Rs 2 crore. He noticed two linked corporate accounts were inactive and identified loopholes to exploit them. According to a Deccan Herald report, Pitadiya devised a scheme and involved an Instagram acquaintance, Neha Ben, convincing her to impersonate the company’s managing director (MD). He forged board resolutions and letterhead documents to portray Neha as the MD.
Neha submitted a fake CIB form along with forged documents to Axis Bank’s Ankleshwar branch in Bharuch, Gujarat, requesting a new user ID linked to CRED’s account with updated email and phone details. Using these credentials, the group initiated the fraudulent transactions.
"Shubham and Shailesh, two accomplices, created forged documents and opened mule accounts for transferring the stolen funds," the police stated.
The fraud came to light on November 13 during a bank account reconciliation exercise by CRED. It was discovered that between October 29 and November 11, 17 unauthorized transactions worth Rs 12.5 crore had been made to dubious accounts. CRED escalated the issue to Axis Bank and filed a complaint with the East CEN Crime Police Station in Bengaluru on November 15.
Police traced the fraud to the Ankleshwar branch, where Neha had submitted the forms. Neha was detained on December 21, and her interrogation led the police to Pitadiya and the others.
Investigations revealed that the suspects had attempted to submit another CIB form to a different Axis Bank branch for activating another account linked to CRED. “This attempt was intercepted, and the fraud was halted,” said an official.
“They accessed sensitive data and created counterfeit CIB forms and board resolutions. These documents were submitted to Axis Bank’s Ankleshwar branch, enabling the fraudulent transactions. The accused confessed to the crime during interrogation and have been remanded to police custody for further investigation," the officer added.
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