The city police recently arrested a man for using bogus cheques to purchase 400 tons of iron worth over Rs25 million from a steel dealer. The suspect disappeared along with the iron after handing the dealer three cheques which were promptly dishonoured by the bank as there wasn’t a penny in the account. Police found the bank account had been opened in the name of a non existent person.
Sajjad alias Mian Jawad Anjum, the suspect, was arrested on information provided by police informers that he was in Islamabad on another mission. He is said to have confessed to defrauding the Pakistan Steels of I-9. His story matched the complainants account.
Police said the suspect was a professional swindler. During the investigation he taunted the victim:
‘They cannot become good businessmen. They should have verified my particulars before materializing the deal and delivering the iron’ when he demanded for the return of the money or the goods.
According to police, Hassan Farid, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pakistan Steels, lodged a complaint with the Industrial area police that some Mian Jawad Anjum had committed a fraud with the company and swindled the firm of millions of rupees.
Farid told the police that a couple of months earlier the suspect had called on him and showed his interest in purchasing iron for different mega projects across the country. Presenting himself as businessman running a construction company, the suspect asked them to send him a sample of the iron which was quickly approved and an order of 400 tons was placed in the name of a construction company, PAKAGON Gulberg III, Lahore.
Later the company was found to be a fake one as one of this name had closed shop long ago.
‘He had maintained that his company was building a seven star hotel (SOFITEL) in Karachi and was also building the Multan-Bahawalpur Bypass. We thought that he was a genuine buyer’ Farid told the police.
Farid said that Sajjad had come to their office on a Toyota Prado bearing registration number LBO 44 and booked the order. He had asked the company to deliver iron at his warehouse near Multan where a person named Waqas had received the consignment.
He had made the fake payment at the Pearl Continental (PC) hotel where he had arrived in a luxury car Porsche, wearing an expensive safari suit. He had given Farid two cheques of Rs.5 million each and a cheque of over Rs.15 million. All these three cheques bounced immediately on presenting in the bank.
In the meantime, the suspect had made away with the iron. ‘The iron delivered to the warehouse near Multan vanished along with Waqas’ said a police official. This proved to the iron dealers that they had been swindled.
Police during the investigation discovered that the expensive cars used by Sajjad were hired vehicles. ‘He had paid some six thousand rupees an hour as rent for the expensive Porsche’ said a police official.
The suspect was in police custody on physical remand and the police were making recoveries of the swindled consignment of iron which had been sold away to different clients. Some of the consignment was located in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa from where it was being recovered.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2010.
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