Caught: Gang busted for cashing billions of rupees on fake documents

The men forged cheques and pay orders and used them to cash money from banks.

KARACHI: The Banking Circle of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) claimed to have apprehended one dozen suspects, who include two bank employees, for committing transactions worth billions of rupees on forged cheques and pay orders.

FIA Commercial Banking Circle (CBC) Karachi Additional Director Khursheed Ahmad Khan Marwat said that the agency received a tip-off that an inter-provincial gang was making bogus cheques currency and pay orders.

According to Marwat, initially three men, Abid Hafeez, Mohammad Sadiq and Malik Sajid, were caught red-handed, while they were trying to cash two forged cheques worth Rs520,000 from Habib Bank’s Bahadurabad branch.

They were arrested and told the FIA officials about Anjum Javed and Adeel Ahmed, employees of United Bank Limited and Bank AI-Falah Limited, who gave them inside information about the bank’s clients who had a lot of money in their accounts.

The men revealed that their gang consisted of one dozen members and they had a modern computerised laboratory at a house in Azeem Goth, Block 4 of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, where they forged documents.

The FIA raided the house and arrested the mastermind, Mohammad Farhan, with eleven others who include, Masood Naeem Akhtar, Syed Kamal Haider Zaidi, Anjum Javed, Syed Adeel Ahmed and Mohammad Adeel.  The equipment and bogus documents were seized, including scanners, blank cheques of different banks and as well as tampered with cheques. The gang had already withdrawn billion of rupees from different commercial banks with the help of the two bank employees who were also arrested.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2011.