The Delhi police have arrested a group of young men and women who were allegedly running an education loan racket in the Capital. The group of eight youth has defrauded about 500 students. They had promised the students easy loans. The total amount of the fraud is more than Rs1 crore. Officials of the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police told that victims not even saw the office of the racketeers.
A 24-year-old, Varun Sardana, a former employee of a multinational bank was the gang leader. Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Neeraj Thakur said, “Sardana, his two school friends Himanshu Sharma, 21, and Sunny Pal, 22, and five girls, aged between 19 and 27 years, were arrested from their office at Parmanand Colony in Mukherjee Nagar on October 28."
Thakur said, "The gang advertised extensively in local dailies in the National Capital Region and offered easy education loans to susceptible customers."
The girls of the gang used to convince the victims to deposit the sum of money. The gang carried out operations through 16 bank accounts and 26 mobile phones, which were applied on fake IDs.
The gang had opened accounts in State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Union Bank and Axis Bank.
Police recovered 57 unused SIM cards and 18 ATM cards from the gang.
Police also seized thirteen registers, with details of transactions, one laptop, one desktop computer and other documents have also been recovered.
Thakur told, it was Sardana idea to float a fake education loan firm, while he worked at a multinational bank in Delhi.
Thakur said, "Sardana left his well-paying job and recruited his school friends, Himanshu and Sunny, to run the racket in Delhi."
He added, "He then hired a few girls and taught them how to sell the story of easy education loans to gullible callers."
The police informed when client called on phone, the girl taking the call asked the client to first deposit an amount between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 as processing fee in a certain bank account.
When the client deposited the money, he was told to send all relevant certificates to a particular email ID.
The police told the gang members deceived the victims by saying that there is some sort of deficiencies are there in certificates which will be sorted out.
Thakur added, "Then the victim was asked to deposit the first installment of the loan in a bank account, before the promised loan materialized."
