On Sept 18, a small village in Chhattisgarh‘s Sakti woke up to find that a ‘SBI’ branch had sprung up overnight. It sported the logo, and cashiers and a manager who looked busy and business-like. Chhapora village felt like it had arrived.
The trusting villagers had no way of knowing it was an elaborate fraud. Even the house owner, who gave it on rent to ‘SBI’ had no clue it was fake.The villagers were, in fact, overjoyed that the bank was recruiting, and the ‘shortlisted candidates’ from nearby districts readily gave Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh each for the jobs. The fake bank even held training sessions for them. It took around a week for the ’employees’ to sense something was wrong – they sat twiddling their thumbs all day. The fraud was exposed in around 10 days but by then, the kingpins of the racket – who called themselves Rekha Sahu, Mandir Das and Pankaj – had vanished. Pankaj had posed as the branch manager. Police in Sakti have registered a case and are looking for the suspects. “All transactions (for the jobs) were made through UPI. We are tracing them. Their phone numbers are untraceable and the addresses they gave were fake,” said an officer. The fraudsters seem to have chosen Chhapora because of its remote location, around 250km from Raipur. Six people were ‘hired’ through walk-in interviews, and told to get more employees. tnn
By then, word had reached the manager of the nearby Dabhra SBI branch about the new ‘Chhapora branch’. He suspected it was fake and decided to visit incognito. He saw the business-like setup and furniture but noticed that the computers didn’t have any software, weren’t linked to any server, there was nothing much on the ledgers and the ‘newly hired staff’ looked confused.
“The Dabhra manager approached Malkharauda police station with his suspicions. He said he had no information of another branch opening in the region and his initial investigation suggests it’s fake,” said Kunwar.
A police team immediately went to the ‘branch’. “When they saw the police, the ’employees’ had a look on their face that said their fears had come true. They said Rekha Sahu, Mandir Das and Pankaj had recruited them on payments of Rs 5 lakh, Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh,” said Sakti subdivisional police officer Manish Kunwar. told TOI .
This fake branch had issued offer letters with job titles of ‘manager’, ‘marketing and sales representative’, ‘cashiers’ and ‘computer operators’.
Police have set up multiple teams to nab the accused. The house owner was so overawed by the ‘bank babus’ that he hadn’t asked for any documents, police said. Kunwar suspects a network of fraudsters is behind this elaborate fraud.