Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!
Rohan (name changed on request), a product manager from Bengaluru, is the ideal Indian borrower. He has an impeccable credit score thanks to timely payments, is a conscious spender, and never uses more than 50% of his line of credit – you get the drift.
Imagine then his horror when he started getting calls and texts from a bank in Himachal Pradesh asking him to repay the EMIs for loans that he never took!
And discovering that his carefully maintained credit score has plunged 100+ points, thanks to the non-repayments of those ghost loans.
When he reached out to the said bank, their records clearly showed a loan of 5 lakhs being linked to his PAN card. With such irrefutable proof staring him in the face, he could not do much and decided to pay off the EMIs.
However, in a last-ditch effort to uncover the mystery he decided to have a look at the loan documents. This is what he found out:
- The Aadhaar Number mentioned in the loan document was not his, and
- Even though the PAN number furnished was his, the photo on the card was not his!
As he spoke to the bank officials and dug deep into the niches of X and Reddit, he learned what exactly had happened:
- Someone got ahold of a colored photocopy of his PAN card
- They put their photo on the PAN card and used that, along with a forged electricity bill, to apply for a fake Aadhaar card.
- The fake PAN + Aadhaar card combo was then used to get the loan from the bank!
Thankfully, the bank officials saw the issue and decided to stop chasing Rohan for further repayments and filed a police case against the actual, unnamed offender.
By then though, Rohan was lighter by Rs. 80,000, hundreds of credit score points, and quite a few strands of his hair (and mind)!