Scammers in India managed to set up and operate a fake branch of the country’s largest bank, the State Bank of India, for 10 days in order to trick people into paying to secure stable jobs there.
The people of Chhapora, a village in India’s Chhattisgarh state, were surprised to see a branch of the State Bank of India opening up in their modest settlement, but while some were skeptical from the very beginning, many saw it as an opportunity to get a stable, decent-paying job. 25-year-old Pintu Dhurve was one of the six people who managed to secure employment as a cashier at the newly opened SBI branch, for which he paid 580,000 rupees ($6,900). There were some red flags, like the complete lack of work to be done and the absence of ID cards for employees, but the SBI logo at the entrance, the 1000 sq. foot “workspace”, brand-new furnishings, and operational bank counters all convinced him that the bank was legit. It wasn’t!
“There were 10 computers, and eventually, we also got an internet connection. An alarm bell used to ring for lunch at 1 pm,” Pintu said. “I was desperately in need of a job. I was working at a common service center when my friend’s sister, Renuka Sahu, told me she would get me a job here. I arranged for the money asked by borrowing money from some friends.”
For 10 straight days, the six employees of the SBI bank in Chhapora came to work only to watch the time pass on the clock. The branch manager, who usually came in at around 10 am and left by noon, told them to access the State Bank of India website and read about the company and its protocols. One day, the manager stopped coming to the bank completely, but still no one said anything. Then, one day, police came in with actual SBI employees and told them that their workplace was an elaborate scam.
Villagers who came by the newly opened SBI branch were always told that they couldn’t perform any operations there because the servers hadn’t been installed and asked to return the next month. Some found the explanation suspicious, but it wasn’t until one local man, Ajay Kumar Agrawal, filed a complaint with the local police about the weird answers he had received at the new bank and the complete lack of a branch code on the bank signboard that the truth came to light.
“The manager of the Dabra branch informed us of his suspicion regarding a fake bank operating in Chhapora. Upon investigation, it was confirmed that the bank was fake, and several employees had been appointed with counterfeit documents,” police spokesperson Rajesh Patel said.
The scam involved duping multiple individuals out of large sums of money by promising them stable jobs at the State Bank of India, and police confirmed that no would-ve bank customers were cheated of their money. However, the poor people who paid to get jobs there lost a combined 1.2 million rupees ($14,300).
