Gang that operated in selling duplicate shares busted, one held

MUMBAI: The city economic offences wing (EOW) on Tuesday busted a gang that was involved in making use of dormant share accounts of hundreds of stock market investors. The accused would later convert the physical shares into demat form with the connivance of some office bearers of registrar and transfer agents (RTAs), said police.

The EOW arrested Rakesh Dixit (42), who was operating at least 15 such accounts. Those under probe are officials from Karvy Computershare Pvt Ltd, Bigshare Services Pvt Ltd and MCS Ltd. The accused have sold thousands of shares amounting to Rs 10 core. Police said that at least eight to nine persons including some women are also part of this syndicate. The mastermind, Dharmesh Singh, is on the run. The police said that the gang was active in Mumbai and Kanpur.

Rajvardhan Sinha, EOW chief, said that they were looking for the suspects women and said that their location was being traced. "One wanted accused has used 16 such accounts. It's a big scam and we will arrest everyone involved in it," he said. "The accused opened demat accounts in the names of these investors in leading brokerages after information on the dormant accounts was provided to them by some RTA officials", said Datta Thopte, investigating officer. The accused would later sell the shares. Investigators found that the accused had also applied for pan cards, and opened bank and demat accounts in the names of the bonafide investors. "While the accused used the bonafide invetors' details, they used t heir own photograph to operate several accounts," said an officer.