You might be a victim of a financial fraud and chances are you do not even know about it. This can happen and there is nothing you can possibly do to control this. It does not matter who you are or whom you know or where you are from or what position you are at.

Consider this. Out of the blue someone from some financial company calls you for bounced cheque and EMI recovery. You are shocked as you have not even purchased a thing in the last six months. The caller then verifies your name, address, date of birth, mobile number, office number etc. None of this that you can deny but suddenly there is a large loan standing in your name.

You have not visited the store in question, not made any payment, perhaps you were not even in town but still somehow someone purchased goods in your name, on your credentials and has now absconded with the goods leaving you in a lurch. You cannot believe this and you call for a fresh CIBIL report and you can clearly see a new loan/s glaring at you. Naturally you are in no mood to pay for some fraudster’s purchase but as a result while you figure out what to do that loan has already started messing up your records and credit score. There is just nothing you can do to deny and the fact remains that you have not bought any goods. What will you do?

No recourse

The police will not be forthcoming and register an FIR. This obviously is a clear case of fraud, identity theft and other criminal offences as well. The police will ask you to submit a letter and they will stamp their acknowledgement – nothing more.

When you demand documents from the financial institutions, they will not co-operate easily; emails you send will fall in some black-hole and you will not know whom to telephone in such large companies. The store where goods were sold may not readily cooperate and give you video footage till a case is registered. CIBIL can be most hostile in such situations.

Any financial institution can freely play havoc with your life, destroy the reputation you have built so far and CIBIL will not only abet it but also play a vital role in distributing that information to each person or company who calls for your credit information. Everything is one sided, everyone is against you and you have no recourse.

How it happens

Greed & Hunger: All are in a hurry. Consumer companies have sales targets to achieve and financial companies are desperate to lend money, garner more business and achieve their business targets. Documents are checked briefly, processes are shallow – more for compliance reasons than for reasons of accuracy and genuineness. Sanction of loan is done on the spot and goods are shipped out of the store. There is either no inclination to verify anything further.

Fake documents: Fraudsters can easily get hold of our documents. We are to blame here as we are just far too careless about how we destroy/ discard vital papers we do not need. Try stopping by for a sandwich on the road; chances are you will be served the sandwich in someone’s demat statement or credit card statement.

Further, anyone can apply for anyone’s PAN card. All the fraudster needs is a copy of your PAN card and some address details, which are so easily available. Every now and then everyone keeps asking us for some sort of ID and address proof and we have no idea of how they safeguard our information. Hence it is easy to infer that our data is generally available. Fraudsters will merge or make a collage of parts of 2-3 documents and produce, for e.g., a bank statement with your name on it or any other official looking document. They may stamp it or notarise it, then make copies of photocopies etc. Even bank accounts are faked as banks do not insist on destruction of old, invalid cheque books hence there are lots of cheque books where the account owner’s name is not printed on the cheque leaf. All such fraudulent documents are put together and loan is applied for and obtained very easily.

The Deviation: There is no real check that actually happens and “deviation” is a popular word used by persons in this line of business which essentially means “Let us do the deal now and get the paper/s later or lets bypass some part of the process”. Everyone is happy at the end of the day; thieves get the goods, lending company’s officers made good business; salesmen will earn good commission; all are happy, except you the victim.

What to do?

The primary thing is you should not sleep over this. This is serious and you should get serious too. Do not think I am too busy now and will worry about that later.

Firstly, as a routine, call for your CIBIL report every six months. If there is a problem, raise an online dispute with CIBIL. Do not expect much, however. Write that letter to the police station anyways. Insist on registering an FIR or at the least file your official statement. Write letters to companies concerned. If emails do not work send registered letters. Write to ombudsmen if you have an issue with a bank.

You will need to undertake a multi pronged attack approach to safeguard your life and situation. Cross your fingers then and hope that things work out for you else continue the paper war.