The Special Report

28th January 2001

  • Beware of the big, bad conman 
  • Sounds of discord 
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    Beware of the big,bad conman

    The emergence of conmen who cheat gullible people over land deals, vehicle sales and many other areas by forging documents including land deeds, identity cards, education certificates and credit cards are a growing concern to the Police in the country.

    The Fraud Bureau which handles most of these cases is saddled with a growing number of cases where people have been cheated some out of millions of rupees, by these conmen.

    Although authorities have been successful in cracking down on some of the offenders, most of the masterminds behind the organised cases of racketeering are still at large.

    Even passports, for which a new format was introduced by immigration authorities to avoid them being tampered with - has been of little success as they too have been altered by these conmen.

    "The laws dealing with this kind of illegal activities are lenient. Most are only punishable with a fine not exceeding several thousand rupees and jail terms are hardly ever handed down," Colombo Fraud Investigation Bureau Director V.Kanthasamy said.

    Prosecution of those involved in forgery depends on reports from the Government Analysts Department's Examiner of Questionable Documents (EQD) who examines the documents referred to them by the Courts.

    Government analyst M.A.J.. Mendis said that they report back as soon as possible on all cases referred to them and have now managed to clear the backlog of cases that had piled up over the years.

    The Department is also equipped with new methods of examining forged documents and have started training some of its examiners abroad.

    Fraudulent land deals is one area in which some people have been cheated out of millions of rupees. Investigations into recent complaints on land deals resulted in the arrest of three employees of the Land Registry who were working hand in glove with the unscrupulous men by helping them remove certain files out at the Registry and replacing them with fraudulent ones.

    According to Inspector Jayaratne of the Fraud Bureau, the modus operandi of the men could make anyone fall victim to them.

    They start by putting a newspaper advertisement, posing as prospective buyers, asking for land in certain prime areas in the country. When people answer their advertisement, they visit the homes of the land owners and obtain photocopies of the land deed saying they have to check with the Land Registry if the deeds are clear. 

    Then they proceed to make an original copy of the deed they have acquired and a national identity card to match. Then they re-advertise the land with certain alterations to the details of the land they are selling so that the real owner would not suspect if he saw the advertisement himself and then they sell it.

    In a case that the Fraud Bureau crackdown recently, a land in Rajagiriya was sold to a unsuspecting buyer for six million rupees. They had also made arrangements to sell the land to a leading doctor who had taken a surveyor and got the details of the land marked. However, before the doctor could buy the land, another man who was interested in buying the same piece of land, this time for Rs 13 million, had become suspicious of the broker who was attempting to sell it and informed the Police. The Police used two decoys to pose as buyers and managed to trace the mastermind behind the fraudulent land sale. The man is now in CID custody pending investigations.

    The family that claims to be the real owners of this land, the market value of which is around Rs 25 million, has had to go to Courts to get back ownership of the land as the man who brought the land from the fraudulent dealer claims that he is now the rightful owner of the land. He says the copy of the deed that he has is the one in the Land Registry and hence his deed legitimate.

    Police warned that people need to be extra careful when buying land except when they are sold by public auction and especially when the land is being sold well below the market price.

    The buying of vehicles by financing using false identity cards is also on the rise, according to Inspector Jayaratne. Several such cases have been reported to the Police but as the chassis numbers, registration numbers and all forms of identification on the vehicles are changed soon after they are bought it is difficult for the Police to trace them on most occasions.

    The Fraud Bureau also recently uncovered a massive racket involving the issue of driving licenses. They raided two driving schools in Colombo and discovered a large number of applications forms, medical certificates, grama sevaka certificates and other documents needed to obtain the license.

    "The people who get the licences through these means have never gone for a driving test. Most of the applicant's claim they have had a license and lost it. This way they are given priority when issuing lisences.," Inspector Jayaratne said.

    He said that even police statements reporting a lost driving license have been formed along with the seal of the OIC of police stations and sent in with the application.

    "This is a major racket involving some of the employees of the Registration of Motor Vehicles Department," IP Jayaratne said. He said that investigations have revealed that some of these people take Rs 15,000 to Rs20,000 monthly from driving school owners and others involved in this racket for their assistance to them.

    Other documents that Police have received complaints of being forged are educational certificates as a means to gain employment as well as grama sevaka certificates and even birth certificates to alter the age.

    Not all cases of forgery are of a serious nature. A humorous case involved a man who altered his sister's birth certificate to make her younger by six years to give her in marriage to a younger man.

    Desperate to get his aging sister married, the man had answered a newspaper matrimonial column giving a false age for his sister. Then he had got a new birth certificate made for her. After the nuptial, when the birth certificate was sent to the Registration of Persons Department for the woman to get a national Identity card, it was detected that the birth certificate was a forged one.

    The brother had appeared before the Police and pleaded guilty to the offence and given his reasons for the illegal act. The case was called before the courts but was dismissed by the Judge with a warning to the man as his sister was now happily married and expecting a baby.

    Other areas where members of the public have been warned are when dealing with credit cards where many frauds have come to light in recent months. Police also warned that paying bills and buying things over the internet giving one's credit card number was risky. Instances where people's credit card numbers have been used to settle bills have been brought to the notice of the Police.


    Sounds of discord

    A recent case of fraud where the Police made a breakthrough and managed to bring the culprits before the courts involves an attempt to rob a company in Colombo of audio equipment valued at Rs. 800,000.

    The incident took place in September when two men claiming to be Indian nationals arrived at the shop in Colombo selling the audio hi-fi equipment and said they wanted to purchase equipment to be installed at their office in a leading five star hotel in the city. 

    They said they would buy the equipment which was valued at Rs. 800,000 and said the payment would be made after the installation was done at their office. The men had arrived at the shop in a hotel car which had the hotel's name prominently displayed on the side

    . "They were very knowledgeable about the products. We had no reason to doubt them," said the businessman who was the victim of the unscrupulous men. 

    The men made their second visit a few days later with a van and the car from a five star hotel. The equipment was loaded into the van while the men got into the hotel car along with two employees of the company and proceeded to the hotel.

    The van had been driven straight to the basement of the hotel while the rest proceeded to the lobby of the hotel. The two men had said they would go to their room and return in a few minutes. The men who had come to install the equipment had waited for almost half an hour and then decided to go to the basement to check if the van that had brought the goods was there. They were shocked to see that the van was missing while the men had also vanished from the hotel by that time.

    When they checked with the hotel, they found that a room had been reserved by the men by telephone but no payments had been made for it. "They were very convincing. They promised the payment after the installation and as we were ourselves going to do the installation, we didn't suspect anything was amiss," the businessman said. 

    The Fraud Bureau which took over the case managed to trace the van to a house in Wattala and arrest two of the suspects and seize the equipment which had been kept there. On information given by them, another suspect was also arrested. All the equipment was returned to the businessman while the men are facing charges. 

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