Housewife held for loan fraud Debamoy

KOLKATA: With the arrest of a 25-year-old housewife from Belghoria in North 24-Parganas on Wednesday, police claim to have busted a gang that cheated people by promising easy loans. Mausumi Saha was identified from a bank's CCTV footage where she had gone to encash cheques collected from an unsuspecting real estate developer from Baguiati.
A senior police officer said Mausumi was on the lookout for a job to supplement her husband's meagre earnings.She responded to an advertisement, seeking executives' for a financial institution. Her bosses' told her that she would have to visit customers to collect blank cheques and copies of identity documents like drivers' licences and PAN cards and encash the cheques from banks. She was paid Rs 200 per day.
Mausumi visited at least 20 loan-seekers in the last few months. Members of the gang would copy the signatures from the identity documents onto the blank cheques and would collect cash from banks. Police suspect that FIRs have been lodged at many police stations across the state.
The visit that proved to be Mausumi's undoing was to John Mukherjee, a realtor from Baguiati. She identified herself as a representative of a non-banking financial institution based in Burdwan. When Mukherjee decided to visit the company's office in Burdwan, he found there was no office on the address mentioned. He immediately asked his bank to block the cheques. But, Mausumi had already encashed cheques worth Rs 48,000 by then. She was identified by the CCTV footage.