Mumbai: Three held for demat account fraud

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The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) arrested three accused for fraudulently obtaining details of unclaimed demat accounts and then illicitly transferring money to their bank accounts. The police are yet to recover the amount and are in search of one more alleged accused.

"Their modus operandi included scrutinising dormant demat accounts and then creating forged documents of customers and defrauding the money before the family members claim the amount. We are in search of one more person and are trying to learn how they accessed the data. Our investigation is at its primary stage," said a police officer.

The latest arrested accused, Manish Shah, 60, was arrested on February 3. The police suspect that they defrauded five customers of JM Financial Services out of R14 crore by misusing identification documents of owners of unclaimed demat accounts. The matter came to light when one of the customer's in Delhi learned about the misappropriation of funds and approached the company and the Delhi police. An FIR was registered at Kasturba Marg police station and was then transferred to the EOW in December last year.

On December 22, Arvind Goyal, 51, a Goregaon resident was arrested. He and another co-accused allegedly posed as representatives of the company and instructed the transfer of shares and then withdrew the amount. Police said the accused produced forged Aadhaar and PAN cards of customers whose accounts had been inactive for a long time. They also opened bank accounts using the forged documents and withdrew the money. The second accused, Priyavand Shah, was nabbed on January 17.