A Rs 23-crore gold loan scam was uncovered after ICICI Bank authorities realised in an internal audit that fake gold has been deposited across its nine branches in Nagpur.
Acting on a complaint filed by Dhananjay Ramesh Thite, an employee at ICICI Bank’s Zonal Office, the Dhantoli police has registered a case of fraud and initiated an investigation.
The allegedly fraudulent scheme was executed between January 2023 and October 2025, the police said.
The alleged scam came to light when the bank conducted an internal audit of its ‘Gold Loan’ portfolio.
During the exercise, it was discovered that the ornaments pledged across nine different branches of the bank were not actually gold, but were instead fake.
According to reports, a total of 195 account holders fraudulently availed themselves of these loans.
The police are investigating whether bank employees or officials were also part of this syndicate, as it would have been impossible to secure loans of such magnitude without the clearance, or “green signal”, from the valuers responsible for verifying the purity of the gold.
(With inputs from Pravin Mudholkar)