Synthetic fingerprint fraud costs GHMC Rs 86.4 lakh

According to the police, the two suspects – P.Shivaiah Umesh and J.Shivaram, both contract Sanitary Field Assistants from GHMC Circle -12; have confessed that they have been cheating the corporation since two years.

Hyderabad: The Amberpet police investigating the synthetic fingerprint cloning racket case have found that the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has incurred a loss of about Rs 86.4 lakh in the last two years due to the cheating.

According to the police, the two suspects – P.Shivaiah Umesh and J.Shivaram, both contract Sanitary Field Assistants from GHMC Circle -12; have confessed that they have been cheating the corporation since two years.

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“Daily 20 sanitation workers were absent for each shift, but marked as present. This caused a loss of approximately Rs 3.6 lakh per month and Rs 43.2 lakh for a year. Since both the suspects were doing this mischief for the last two years it comes around Rs 86.4 lakh for two years,” said a police official.

They have been supervising sanitation workers and recording daily attendance through biometric devices which are allotted by GHMC authorities to them.

Investigation revealed that the suspects collected 35 thumb impressions of sanitation workers out of which 21 workers are working under Shivaiah Umesh and 14 were working under Shivaram, with whom they had an understanding to share the wages.

“The device contains details of sanitation workers and their attendance gets marked through thumb impression by the said device. They illegally claimed the wages of sanitation workers who were absent by cloning their thumb impressions,” the official said.

Method of preparing cloning fingerprints:

The sanitation workers press their thumb on a layer of candle wax and cloning duplicate fingerprint by using M-Seal and Fevicol or Dendrite glue or wax, thereby making a synthetic thumb impression. The layer of Fevi Gum, containing fingerprint of the worker, was pressed against the biometric scanner to record the attendance of the absentee.