Mumbai: A 43-year-old man working as a gold valuer at a public sector bank here has been arrested for allegedly duping it of Rs 3.77 crore on the pretext of inspecting the precious metal received from customers, a police official said on Sunday.
The accused, Ramaswamy Nadar, a resident of Antop Hill area here, was working in the gold loan department of the Indian Bank's Dharavi branch for past two years, besides running his own jewellery shop, he said.
When the bank recently decided to liquidate some of its assets and opened lockers holding gold items in 77 packets, they found the yellow metal to be fake. The bank then immediately lodged a complaint with Dharavi police station, he said.
"During the probe, the police zeroed-in on Nadar, who, after initially denying any role in the scam, confessed that he had purchased fake jewellery from Dadar and set up 12 dummy customers to cheat the bank. He was subsequently arrested on Wednesday," senior police inspector Suresh Patil said.
"Nadar's job was to issue value certificates to those opting for gold loan. He used documents like PAN and Aadhaar cards to show 12 of his accomplices as customers.
These customers then deposited fake gold at the bank and Nadar fraudulently gave them value certificates," Patil said.
An amount of Rs 3.77 crore was given as loan against gold to these customers, another police official said.
"This money was siphoned-off by Nadar after giving the dummy customers a small sum," he said.
Nadar purchased some property, cars and motorcycles with the amount, he said.
"Efforts were underway to recover the money from him. He has been charged under Indian Penal Code Sections 420 (cheating) and 34 (common intention), and a hunt is on for the 12 people who helped him in the scam," he said.
Since Nadar also worked as a valuer with the bank's branch in Sion area, the police are trying to find out if he conducted a similar fraud there also, the official said.
Following his arrest, the accused was produced before a local court which remanded him in police custody till September 17, he added.
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