NEW DELHI: According to reports, a gang of fraudsters obtained the PAN card details of various Bollywood actors and cricket players through their online-accessible GST Identity Numbers.
Abhishek Bachchan, Shilpa Shetty, Madhuri Dixit, Emraan Hashmi, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are some of the celebrities whose identities and personnel information was exploited by the con artists, according to Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Shahadra Rohit Meena.
Only after the thieves used some of these cards to buy goods worth Rs 21.32 lakh did the company learn about the crime.
The Delhi Police were promptly notified, and they launched an operation to apprehend five of them.
According to Delhi Police, the five accused—Puneet, Mohd Asif, Sunil Kumar, Pankaj Mishar, and Vishwa Bhaskar Sharma—acted as a team to defraud the company in an innovative way.
It should be noted that they revealed their special method of operation when questioned. They previously obtained these celebrities' GST information through Google.
They were well aware that the PAN number comes after the GSTIN, after the first two state codes. They similarly falsified the information on their Aadhar cards. When they learned this, they applied for credit cards.
They were asked questions during the video verification process about their financial activities, which they were able to respond to quickly because they had all the necessary information from CIBIL.
Furthermore, they were aware that Abhishek Bachchan cannot be recognised as a movie star by the internet authentication mechanism.
In order to obtain a card, the images of the accused, Pankaj Mishra, and Abhishek Bachchan's PAN and Aadhaar information worked perfectly.
In addition, the police disclosed that they spent months conducting online research to discover ways to exploit flaws in the online approval and issuing of credit cards.
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