For three years, Manish Ambekar cheated jewellers, grocers and banks of over a crore by pretending to be a woman

From 2015 to 2018, a woman had become the bane of existence for a wide range of businesses, from jewellers and banks to grocers and snack centres. The name ‘Dr. Swati’ invoked dread; her victims were conned into handing over lakhs of rupees to ‘Dr. Swati's assistant’ through an ingenious modus operandi, setting police stations in at least three commissionerates on the fraudster’s trail. And herein lies the twist: The ‘woman’ was not a woman at all.

There is nothing about Manish Ambekar (40) that makes him a head-turner. With an average height and build, the Panvel resident does have one discerning quality: his effeminiate voice, which could pass off as a woman’s on the phone with a little modulation.

Mr. Ambekar, who says he is a real estate agent, honed this to such perfection that he is believed to have made off with at least ₹1 crore to ₹1.5 crore in the three years he is believed to have been active. And this is based on just the 20 complaints against him that have come to light.

The con

Explaining Mr. Ambekar’s modus operandi, Deputy Commissioner of Police Dr. D.S. Swami, Zone I, Thane Police, said, “Mr. Ambekar had a list of public telephones in the vicinity of hospitals in Mumbai and Thane. He would call up his victim posing as ‘Dr. Swati’ from the nearest hospital and use various lies to con different targets. For example, in the first case registered against him with the Naupada police in 2015, he called up a jewellery store in Thane and told them his daughter was getting married and that he needed to buy some jewellery, asking the jeweller to send his assistants to the hospital with some samples.”

There was one common aspect in all the cases registered against him: he would ask the assistants to come with change for large amounts like ₹1 lakh. Change has always been an issue in businesses across the city, and a lot of transactions include ascertaining whether at least one of the parties has change for the amount agreed upon.

In 2015, when the jewellers’ employees reached the hospital, Mr. Ambekar allegedly approached them at the gate and told them ‘Dr. Swati’ was waiting for them on the fourth floor. He then asked them to hand him the change they had brought, so he could count it while they showed the jewellery samples to Dr. Swati. The employees, taken in by his spiel, handed ₹2 lakh in small currency notes to him and went up to the fourth floor of the hospital, only to find that there was no Dr. Swati working there. When they came back downstairs to find the “assistant”, there was no sign of him either.

How the idea spawned

Mr. Ambekar, who was arrested in December 2018, has allegedly said in his confession that he got the idea during a visit to Crawford Market several years ago. Traders in the market, who seal hundreds of deals every day, need to ensure that the unavailability of change is not a hindrance, and always check with their clients if they have change, or will need some, Dr. Swami said.

“Mr. Ambekar realised that asking the other party to send change is an accepted part of sales and purchases and would not raise suspicion. Further, he would never touch the goods that the target establishment’s assistants had brought with them, telling them that Dr. Swati would receive the goods or examine the samples, further decreasing suspicion,” police sub-inspector Mahesh Kawle, Naupada police station, said.

Apart from asking for samples from jewellers, other ruses included calling banks to say he wanted to start a fixed deposit account, calling grocers saying he wanted a large order of groceries at the hospital for a function and calling snack centres to place orders for 500 samosas and soft drink bottles at a time. In every instance, he would ask for change, collect it at the hospital gate and let the bewildered victims roam the entire hospital building looking for ‘Dr. Swati’.

Scanning CCTV footage

The team that arrested Mr. Ambekar scoured footage from nearly 70 to 80 closed circuit television cameras around all the hospitals from where ‘Dr. Swati’ claimed to be calling. When it became clear that there was no woman visible around the time of the calls, the team realised there was no Dr. Swati to begin with.

The police then scanned the footage again to look for the most probable suspect and also examined cellular location movements of hundreds of numbers that passed through the area, before finally matching a cell phone number to a face in the footage. This led to Mr. Ambekar’s arrest on December 14 last year.

“Mr. Ambekar, while being married, was also involved with a bar girl for whose expenses he would always be in need of large sums of money. This, coupled with his observations at Crawford Market, spawned the idea of the con. We are trying to find out how many more such offences he is wanted for,” Dr. Swami said.

Till date, Mr. Ambekar has been found to have been responsible for 12 offences in the Thane City commissionerate, six in the Mumbai commissionerate and two in the Palghar commissionerate. He is currently in judicial custody, while his victims continue to nurse their wounds.