Sanjeev Kumar, Muzaffarpur. After the police investigation in the case of fraud of more than Rs 5 crore from the accounts of Punjab National Bank (PNB) customers, now the ED has intensified the investigation. On the other hand, the properties of six accused including bank employee Nitish Kumar, who was earlier sent to jail by the police in the case, are also being searched.
According to the officials, illegally acquired property is being traced. After this, efforts will soon be made to confiscate the illegally acquired property. In this direction, details of the property of all the accused including bank employees are being collected by contacting the zonal and registration office.
In this case, the ED team had raided four places in Muzaffarpur last week. Rs 83 lakh were seized in this. Investigation revealed that about a dozen hawala traders from Kolkata and Bangalore are also involved in the fraud game. The fraud amount was transferred to the accounts of all of them. After this, money used to come to all of them through various means.
The names of many hawala traders from Bengaluru and Kolkata had also come up in the police investigation. In the past, the ED team had reached the city police station several times and met the investigating officer of the case and collected information on many points. ED teams are busy in action in both the cities.
It may be noted that about four years ago, a case of cyber fraud worth crores of rupees from PNB came to light when Rs 5 lakh each was withdrawn four times from the bank account of a retired BSNL employee in June 2021. The next day also a withdrawal of Rs 2 lakh 40 thousand was made. In this way Rs 22 lakh 40 thousand were withdrawn from his account.
An FIR was lodged in the city police station in the matter. The police started investigating it. In this, the police had exposed a gang that was embezzling money from bank accounts. Investigation revealed that Nitish Kumar Singh, an employee posted at Gobarsahi PNB branch, used to extract the details of customers and send them to the gang's miscreants.
After this, cyber fraud used to make the customer's mobile network disappear using high technology. Then after taking a photocopy of the documents given in the bank, they would get another SIM in their name and get it ported. After this, they used to play the game of transferring the account through the bank's mobile app. The amount was deposited into the accounts of hawala traders.