‘While Three are Arrested We Searching for the Kingpin in Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS) Fraud’- Top Cop aka Police Commissioner Anupam Agarwal
Mangaluru: Speaking to the media police commissioner Anupam Agarwal said ” We are searching for the kingpin of the Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AEPS) fraud while we have collected information from the three arrested. We have taken the arrested persons to Bihar and conducted the Panchanama. The accused are presently in judicial custody. Two more, including the kingpin of the crime, were being traced. 60 complaints of AEPS fraud were registered in Mangaluru and 10 more came to light after the arrest of the accused. The government will take steps to return the lost money to the victims, and all States were informed about the modus operandi of the fraudsters”.
“The accused had defrauded people in Chikmagalur and Bengaluru in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the accused have revealed over 300 such frauds across the country by taking the thumb impression of people registering documents in subregistrars’ offices. Using the victims’ Aadhaar number downloaded from documents of Cauvery-2 software, they used to withdraw money from bank accounts. Mr Agrawal said five teams were suspected to be involved in the AEPS fraud, while only one team was booked,” added the Police Commissioner.
The Three arrested persons -Kumar Hebram Vivek Kumar Biswas and Madan Kumar on 29 October
He further said, “However the Kingpin is still at large. Several people who had registered their properties at the sub-registrar office in Mangaluru in the last six months had lost their money from various banks using AEPS. We have seized a few laptops, printers and other items from the accused. The arrested accused have been remanded in judicial custody until further notice. The preliminary findings reveal that there are three to four gangs active in such AEPS fraud cases in Bihar. The city police have written to various police stations in Karnataka and other states, including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, on the fraud cases being reported”.
“During the interrogation, the arrested accused had revealed that the kingpin would send them the documents downloaded from Kaveri 2.0 software, and software of other states. Each of the accused was assigned a task, and based on the fingerprints from the documents, they would develop it and use it for transferring the cash using AEPS. We have recovered documents downloaded from Chikkamagaluru, Bengaluru, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the laptops and computers recovered from the accused. More than 100 documents were downloaded from the Telangana sub-registrar’s office software,” said Agrawal.
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