Mumbai: The west region police at the BKC have arrested three men, including a BTech student, for allegedly cheating a businessman of Rs 15 lakh in an investment share trading fraud. While one accused gave his account to park the complainant’s money, the other two opened new accounts and sent debit cards and cheque books to their accomplice in Punjab for use in other crimes, police said.
Those arrested were Vipul Patne (28), who hails from Nagpur, and Chhattisgarh residents, Shivam Prasad (26) and Anmol Shahi (20), a BTech student. All three accused were arrested on April 25. They were produced before a court, which remanded them in police custody till Tuesday.

According to the FIR registered on April 5, the complainant was lured into investing in online share trading by the accused. The complainant was given a login and password, which were used to access his virtual account. He was asked to trade from an app he downloaded from a link sent by the accused. The fraudsters gave him different account numbers to make payments for buying shares. The complainant transferred around Rs 15 lakh, of which more than Rs 4.5 lakh was sent to Patne’s account.
A team led by senior inspector Datta Chavan and assistant inspector Dr Nitin Gachhe found the details of Patne’s account and apprehended him. Police also arrested Prasad and Shahi who opened the bank account used in this crime. “Police also seized cheque books and ATM cards of 25 bank accounts in the name of different individuals, 15 SIM cards, three mobile phones, Aadhaar cards, PAN cards and other items from the accused persons,” said a source.
“During probe, we found there were 39 complaints against several of these bank accounts registered on the national cyber crime reporting portal,” said a police officer.
The accused told police that they contacted many individuals and asked for their documents to open the bank accounts. For opening a savings account, the accused would give the person Rs 10,000 and use his documents and Rs 15,000 for the current account, said police.