With the arrest of three persons police today claimed to have busted a gang which allegedly duped a person of around Rs 9 lakh on the pretext of arranging for a Rs 50 crore bank guarantee.
The gang, led by Vijay Porter, came into contact with the complainant, a management consultant by profession, last May through a mutual friend of one of the accused, Chander Prakash.
The accused introduced themselves to the complainant as liaison officer, valuer and advocate at a nationalized bank in which the complainant had an account, DCP (northwest) Vijay Singh said.
While Porter, Prakash and their partner Kewal Krishna have been arrested under charges of impersonation, cheating and forgery, two of their women accomplices too have been named as accused in the case and will be included in the charge-sheet, he added.
According to police, the accused entered into a deal with the complainant and charged him around Rs 7 lakh as facilitation fee for the Rs 50 crore bank guarantee.
Some men pretending to be valuers visited the complainant's residence and valued the property at around Rs 68 crore. They even prepared a Legal Search Report with the help of a Delhi High Court lawyer. They prepared as many forged documents - including bank slips, etc - as the plan demanded.
To convince their target, the gang made one of their women accomplices call up the complainant and made another meet him impersonating as a branch manager. They asked the complainant to come to the Parliament Street branch of the bank on October 30 but they never turned up.
As the complainant kept calling them, they stopped taking calls, following which the complainant approached the police in March.
Two of the accused were arrested on April 18. Their interrogation led to the arrest of the others. It emerged that the gang members had been arrested in four separate cases of cheating and forgery earlier.
