NEW DELHI: This probably qualifies as the con of the year. The plan was brilliant in its conception: create fake companies and have bank accounts opened for their ghost employees and then use their credit and ATM cards to draw money. The gang allegedly managed to dupe HDFC Bank of close to Rs 1 crore in this manner.Police said on Saturday that the conmen formed two fictitious companies, taking care to give them the fake and misleading names of Ericsson Technologies and Carso Global Telecom India. They then created an employee list for the two firms. Using forged credentials, they opened bank accounts in the names of these ghost employees. The “employers”, or the two companies, then began transferring salaries to the accounts of the “employees” every month.A third business company was created, its current account opened, and a point of sale (POS) machine procured in its name. The credit cards of the ghost employees were swiped on this POS machine and the money subsequently retrieved from ATMs. The crooks also managed to take loans against the employees’ salary accounts. The gang managed to siphon off Rs 97.8 lakh before going underground.The bank detected suspicious transactions involving big amounts and roped in the cops for a probe. It took 10 months of extensive investigation for police to bust the scamsters.DCP (south-east) Chinmoy Biswal said, “HDFC Bank complained to us that its officials observed that companies going by the name of Carso Global Telecom India and Ericsson Technologies had credited salaries at periodic intervals from other bank accounts in saving accounts held in various Delhi branches of HDFC Bank.”He said the bank had extended credit facilities to the account holders in the form of credit cards and loans, but later discovered during scrutiny that most of the documents used to open the accounts were forged. They also realised that the same set of photographs had been used to open various accounts. Bank officials visited the addresses of the two companies, but found no businesses operating from the premises. “The registered office of Ericsson Technologies turned out to be a residential house,” said Biswal. The fictitious directors of the two companies in the bank documents were given as Yogender Singh, Bittu Singh, Karan Singha and Amit Kumar.An FIR was registered and a team led by SHO Ajab Singh and SI Nagender Nagar began the probe. The team studied the documents provided by the bank, mounted technical surveillance and used human intelligence to gather information. CCTV footage from the bank and ATMs was collected for analysis.The video feed showed a person depositing cash in the bogus current bank accounts of the companies and getting the money transferred to the fake saving bank accounts. He was also spotted withdrawing money from the saving accounts at ATMs. The suspect, Sanjeet Kumar, was traced to south-east Delhi’s Madanpur Khadar and arrested.While Kumar, 32, is in the cops’ grip, raids are being conducted in Delhi, UP and Bihar in the hunt for the others. Police have seized a laptop with incriminatory data, printers, lamination machines, monitors and other gadgets apart from Aadhaar cards and PAN cards from the group’s hideout.