How fraudsters used Dhoni, Tendulkar, Abhishek Bachchan, Madhuri’s PAN, Aaddhar details to get credit cards

As per police report, a group of fraudsters allegedly procured PAN details of Bollywood actors and cricketers from their GST Identification Numbers available online, and got credit cards issued in their names from Pune-based fintech startup ‘One Card’.

“The accused allegedly duped banks of over Rs 50 lakh by fraudulently using details of celebrities like MS Dhoni, Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Sachin Tendulkar, Saif Ali Khan, Hritik Roshan, Alia Bhatt, Shilpa Shetty, Emraan Hashmi and others,” DCP Shahdara Rohit Meena said.

How fraudsters used celebrities details to do fraud:
The fraudsters got GST details of these celebrities from Google. The first two digits of GSTIN are state code and the next 10 digits are PAN number.

As the celebrities personal details like date of birth are widely knows and is easily available on Google, the fraudsters got two important PAN details — PAN and date of birth — without any effort.

After getting these two details, they applied for new PAN card 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.

Similarly, they followed the same procedure to forge the Aadhaar details. After getting new PAN and aaddhar, the fraudsters applied for new credit cards from from Pune-based fintech startup ‘One Card’.

During video verification, they were asked questions related to celebrities financial activities which they answered easily as they had got all such details from CIBIL.

The fraudsters allegedly did online research for several months to find ways to use loopholes in the online verification and issuance of credit cards.

The Pune-based FPL Technologies Private Limited issues “One Card” which is 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,” the company said in its complaint to the police.

The company further alleged that these fraudsters approached the company through their app by uploading the details such as PAN and Aadhaar number to get credit cards issued in their names.

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 Rs 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.

The company came to know about this fraud when the system got an alert that multiple on boarding attempts were being made using a single device. The accused allegedly tried to get new card using 83 PAN details from seven devices.

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

(Inputs from PTI)