In the digital age fraudsters dupe AIIMS of ₹12 crore by cloning cheques and signatures

Fraudsters siphoned off ₹12 crore from two bank accounts of India's premier medical institute, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), by allegedly using 'cloned cheques' over the past one month.

The money has been siphoned off from the bank accounts the medical institute has with the State Bank of India (SBI). The bank has initiated an internal enquiry into the matter.

A top placed source in Delhi Police told IANS on the condition of anonymity, "This is a case of cyber crime. The accounts from which ₹12 crore have been withdrawn are operated by the AIIMS director and the Dean. ₹7 crore were withdrawn from the account operated by the Director whereas ₹5 crore were withdrawn from the account held on the name of the Dean."

If sources are to be believed, the AIIMS in its report sent to the Union Health Ministry held responsible for the fraud.

The SBI has also alerted all its branches and advised its employees against paying high value cheques issued by AIIMS, New Delhi.

A Delhi Police source said: "The hospital administration has already informed the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police, which has initiated a probe."

A hospital source said that the fraudsters made attempts to siphon off over ₹20 crore from SBI's non-home branch in Dehradun and ₹9 crore from Mumbai in the last one week by allegedly using the cloned cheques. However, they failed in their attempts.

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Media reports in 2016 had reported that a gang of five persons, who were involved in a fraud involving encashment by forging bank cheques had been busted in Uttar Pradesh

The gang initially tried taking photographs of cheques issued by companies. They then duplicated the cheques by chemically altering the number and forging signatures by tracing the signature. They also called the bank and obtained the balances in the account giving some details such as the “last payment made”.

Media reports had quoted police as saying that the gang used the cheque leaves issued to themselves while opening the account and created the forged cheques by altering the Cheque Number. They managed to encash the Account Payee cheques.

The Reserve Bank of India had come up with a set of guidelines for banks to ensure preventive measures to lower cheque frauds. One measure aimed to employ mobile technology in the form of SMS alerts to be sent out as soon as a cheque is received for clearing

Another step to scrutinise large value cheques was to alert customers via phone calls and obtain confirmations from the drawer/payer of the cheque. RBI had stated that banks should exercise extra caution while clearing cheques that are above a certain threshold value.

Account holders were also advised to follow the following steps:

1. Keep your cheque in a safe place
2. Destroy unwanted cheques
3. Never sign a blank cheque
4. Keep a record of all your cheques
5. Check your bank statement regularly

What is surprising is that the AIIMS Director or Dean apparently were neither alerted nor were the recipients of SMS alerts.

Attempts to contact the Director, AIIMS for a comment proved abortive. We will update the report as and when we hear from them.