Fraud within fakery of currency notes

SNS | Kolkata, 14 April, 2015: The city police has finally unravelled the mystery behind the huge cache of counterfeit currency recovered from a Maniktala flat in February this year. Police now say the notes were part of the 'Nigerian-style fraud' hatched by the accused, not meant for release into circulation as legal tender.

The con is so namedbecause the first wave of such scams came from Nigeria, in which the scamster sends random emails to people telling them that they have won several millions of pounds as a prize and need to pay a small fee before the prize money gets transferred to the winner's account. People often fall for it and end up losing their money.

The Special Task Force had seized fake currency notes with a face value of more than Rs 10 crore from the house of a scrap dealer in Maniktala area and had arrested the scrap dealer last February. The seizure also included fake currency notes of five countries.

Besides, 450 gunny bags of shredded notes and dices for printing notes were recovered. Chandrasekhar Jaiswal (51), the scrap dealer, who is a resident of CIT Road in Maniktala, was arrested in this connection.

Almost a month and a half after the recovery, police claim that Chandrasekhar had tried to dupe a person using the Nigerian-style fraud by sending an e-mail that he had won 1 trillion dollars.

“The fake currency was printed to win the confidence of his victim. He had sent the photographs of the counterfeit currency to make him believe that he had won the money. Chandrasekhar had asked for Rs 2 lakh as a processing fee from him. The man had already paid Rs 30,000 and the rest was to be given in phases,” said a senior official in the STF.

The plan was going well, but Chandrasekhar was caught after three printers, whom he had paid to print the counterfeit notes, informed police. “The printers were unwilling to print the fake notes, but finally agreed because of their poor economic condition,” said the official. They, however, printed on the counterfeit currency notes a statement that said the notes were 'for promotional activity only,' making it clear that the notes were not to be used as legal tender.

During the investigation, the sleuths also found that Chandrasekhar had taken a loan of Rs 2 crore from a bank using forged documents of his mother's flat in Maniktala and had used a part of the amount in the planning for the fraud.

Based on the information by the printers, the police began investigation and nabbed Chandraskhar from an Amherst locality on 27 February. The RBI in its report has confirmed that the notes were all counterfeit, though high quality paper was used in printing them.