Conman who lives in a condo

KOLKATA: He stays at a premium condominium at Rajarhat, where he has doctors, engineers and chartered accountants as neighbours. His son studies at a well-known CBSE school in south Kolkata. Whenever he steps out, he is always dressed to the T, impeccable in his branded clothes.
The suave Dinesh Agarwal, who seemed to easily gain trust of people, leads a posh life, but his entire expense is apparently borne by stealing debit and credit cards and swiping out money, even before his victims can block their cards.
Agarwal (45), who was finally arrested by the Kolkata Police on Wednesday night from Rajarhat, had been on the cops' lookout list for long. The fraudster is an expert in stealing credit and debit cards and mobiles, both used to drain out money within hours. The police are looking for his accomplices.

The police started looking for Agarwal after a professor at Vidyasagar College lodged a complaint at the Ahmherst Street police station. According to the complaint, the physics professor, who was in a rush to reach her class on time, left behind her bag at the department on May 27. Agarwal, who would snoop around banks, clubs and government establishments looking for targets--most of them distracted women--was allegedly at the college at that time and picked up the bag.
By the time the professor lodged a police complaint in the evening, more than a lakh had been swiped out of her two cards from a foreign bank. She also had three expensive mobiles in the bag.
Agarwal allegedly bought clothes and shoes from expensive branded shops and purchased gold worth Rs 50,000, besides withdrawing cash from an ATM, draining out Rs 1.8 lakh within a matter of a few hours.
The police pointed out that no one saw him pick the bag up but they made a breakthrough while poring over the images of a CCTV camera installed inside an ATM.
“There had been earlier complaints as well, and the modus operandi matched with his way of functioning. We are looking for Agarwal's gang,“ a top Kolkata Police officer said.
Explaining his modus operandi, a source said Agarwal would set his target on well-to-do women at banks, government offices and shopping malls, preferably their attention caught in something. “Many save the PINs of their credit and debit cards and bank accounts in mobiles. Agarwal, who would steal the bags or mobiles and purses, would retrieve the numbers in their phones,“ said an officer. “If the PINs were not saved, he would use the mobile to call up banks, pose as the victim and get hold of information.“
Present at the court of ACMM II Abhijit Ghosh, the police on Thursday claimed that they had spotted Agarwal in CCTV images.
Agarwal's lawyer, however, claimed after he was arrested not a single piece of paper could be found on him to establish he had made the purchases with the cards. “It is also being alleged that he took out sensitive data from banks to commit the crime. It is impossible for a man to impersonate a woman and collect data from a bank,“ Dinesh's lawyer Sandip Ghosh said in court.