Aadhaar fraudsters busted in India

Three men have been arrested in India under suspicion of manufacturing fake Aadhaar, PAN and voter ID cards in their house, the Times of India reports.

The three men, aged 26, 35 and 53 respectively have been identified as Harish Kumar A, G Shanmugam and Rajeshekharan and were busted as they tried to cash a phony cheque.

According to the Times report, police arrested 14 others and seized 27 fake credit cards which had been used to make major purchases. These fraudulent credit cards were in the name of two major private Indian banks and a few multinationals.

“Using [fake] credit cards, the accused purchased a Toyota Innova car, a Mahindra Scorpio, 11 two-wheelers, high-end watches, electronic gadgets like mobile phones and gold jewellery. We are yet to estimate the total worth of goods they have purchased. The kingpin of the racket, Jayakumar, is among the arrested. He had joined hands with another agent Gunashekharan, who brought the fake cards from Malaysia. Gunashekharan is absconding,” DCP (South) HS Revanna said.

Though credit card fraud is nothing new, faking Aadhaar numbers would seemingly be more complicated to pull off, considering Aadhaar numbers are all tied to biometric profiles. As reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, the Unique Identity Authority of India has recently discovered and cancelled 384,000 Aadhaar numbers fraudulently issued under a biometric exception clause.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometrics  |  fraud  |  Indian government  |  law enforcement  |  UIDAI  |  Unique Identity Authority of India