Great, One Capture Eliminated 130 Criminal Identities

A master forger created 130 identities for himself to open 473 bank accounts, including 200 with Barclays and 85 with the NatWest. Why? To perpetrate > £1 million in loan defaults leaving all the major High Street clearing banks with large debts. He was jailed for five and a half years Monday.

Kanagaratnam Ganan, 33, a Sri Lankan granted British citizenship in 2002, was the ringleader of the sophisticated fraud that involved two fellow Sri Lankans, Mr. Gnanachchandran and Mr. Rajaratnam. Kanagaratnam, posing as a recent arrival from Imdia, established credit-worthiness. Then he raised the stakes by applying for credit cards, loans and overdrafts on his accounts before defaulting. He had arranged 112 separate, mail redirection facilities to prevent banks from tracing the defaults to himself. His two confederates laundered the ill-gotten monies for him and received 1 and 3 year jail terms.

The scam had lasted five years before authorities captured the 'ghosts' they had been chasing in December, 2004 after an eight month investigation. Police captured Ganan at his home and have recovered £380,000 of his fraudulent receipts, much less than he got due to thousands lost speculating on dot-com businesses. Officers said a large chunk of cash had also been used to fund the crimes. So how did they catch him? He needed 130 different faces.