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Lamington Road partners put fraudsters
behind bars
The IT
partners at Lamington Road have recently managed to hand two fraudsters to the
police. These two culprits are accused to be a part of a group, which is
reported to cheat almost an amount of Rs,40
lakh from the market.
Modus Operandi
The entire game begun, when a dealer named Rohit Parekh started to deal with
some partners at Lamington road almost eight months back. Parekh had his
organiza-tion named Satellite Comput-ers at Bhandup. According to the channel
community at Lamington Road, Parekh have always cleared his payments on time and
no problems have been accounted with the cheques, which he issued till November
end. However the things reversed, when his cheques started to bounce few weeks
back and he was reported absconding. When the affected partners visited
Parekh's office, they found that the office was booked in rent and there was
no trace of Parekh and his company there.
The
cheques issued by Pakekh were from the Indus Ind bank, which had its branch at
Lamington Road. Umang Mehta, the spokesperson for Trade Association of
Informa-tion Technology (TAIT), Mum-bai said, “While tracking Parekh's bank
account, we discovered that the account, from which Parekh issued the cheques is
in the name of Bharat Mali. The account was running in the negative balance,
because of the cheque bouncing. To track the entire chain, we looked into the
transactions of the account and discovered that the account had regular cash
payments from another account, the owner of which was the Shuklaji Street based
dealer, Hardana Bishnoy. The bank also informed us that few days back
Bishnoy's account has been closed.”
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According
to the market sources, Bishnoy started his business around three years back with
his organization, Ramdev Infotech. After doing business for few months, Ramdev
went bankrupt and Bishnoy had to close down his shop. However Bishnoy re-opened
his shop after few months with a new name, Sun Infosys. When DQ Week tried to
contact Bishnoy's mobile number, it was answered 'not reachable'.
Mehta
said, “When we searched for Bishnoy, he was absconding. So we caught hold of
his brother Kalu Bishnoy, who was working for a Lamington road based dealer
Kachora Infosys.”
According
to Mehta, some of the products, which Parekh had purchased from several dealers
at Lamington road, were discovered at Kachora's godown. He said, “We helped
the police to track the goods, which Parekh had purchased from the dealers at
Lamington road and police have now sealed the godown. Later on Kalu spoke out
few names, who are involved in the racket and based on that Kachora has now been
taken into police custody.” When DQ Week tried to contact Kachora's mobile
number, a lady answered the call and refused to comment anything about the
matter.”
Who
are the victims?
According to Mehta, TAIT has received the names of around 15 partners, who have
been cheated by this group. Mehta said, “I am sure more names will come
forward in next few days.”
Modi
Peripherals Pvt Ltd is one of the victims of this fraud racket. Speaking about
the loss, Samir Joshi, Marketing Executive, Modi Peripherals, said, “We have
been cheated of an amount of Rs. 5 lakhs. We were dealing with Parekh since past
six months. If such kind of incidents continues to happen, then we will have to
close down our business!”
Similarly
Pacific Infotech reported to be cheated of an amount of Rs. 4 lakhs. Suresh
Chhatlani, CEO of Suresh Computers, said, “To prevent these type of incidents,
we are now planning to issue a certain type of form, which the new dealers need
to fill. This form will contain the columns, where the dealers need to fill
their permanent addresses.”
What
is police doing?
Although an FIR complaint has been registered with the Lamington road police
station and two persons are taken into custody, yet the partners feel that
police is lacking pace to resolve the issue. One partner, on the condition of
anonymity, said, “Police is not proceeding in the required pace for this
issue.”
When DQ Week tried to contact Suresh Deshpande, the
Inspector at Lamington Road, who is in charge of the case, he said, “We have
rec-eived orders from our head office not to comment any-thing on this
matter.”