Freight forwarding fraud: Mastermind nabbed in Chennai

CHENNAI: Three more key suspects involved in the freight forwarding cheating network have been arrested by the Chennai police for allegedly luring big shipping companies to provide containers for rent at a cheaper price in the city. While the CCB sleuths arrested three suspects on June 2, the police team on Wednesday nabbed three more people, including the mastermind Titus Samuel from Thoothukudi. Police estimated that the gang could have cheated various companies to the tune of Rs.50 crore. The police said that the suspects posed as genuine exporter/shipper and engaged freight forwarding companies to hire barges orcontainers from shell companies referred by them for export of construction material from Thoothukudi to places like Maldives and Jeddah. While no such export takes place as the shipper and liner are fake companies created in fictitious names by the same fraudsters. Also all cargo related documents shipping bills, invoice, bills of lading are created fake and no cargo moved as projected.The suspects had registered around 40 companies with ROC and used these companies as shipper and liner functioning distinctly from each other. The fraudsters haveopened around 61 bank accounts in the name of shell companies, obtained around 15 SIM cards, 81 digital signature certificates, obtained payments and defaulted payments, made imports/exports only on paper, cheated genuine companies based across the country.