Bank duped of over Rs 10 lakh in fake jewellery pledge scam

A brazen fraud has surfaced in Karkala of Udupi district, where a couple and a complicit gold appraiser allegedly swindled Gokarnanatha Co-operative Bank out of nearly Rs. 10.58 lakh by repeatedly pledging counterfeit gold ornaments as genuine collateral for loans over a year-long period. Bank manager Lakshmana Shetty filed a formal complaint at Karkala City Police Station against the duo, Nagaraj and his wife Renuka B, along with the bank’s designated gold tester, Satish Acharya, who certified the fakes as authentic.

The deception unraveled after persistent scrutiny exposed the sham, revealing a web of deceit that went undetected for months.

Between January 25, 2024, and September 30, 2025, the couple frequented the bank, presenting batches of bogus jewellery for appraisal and loan approvals. Each time, Acharya examined the pieces and vouched for their purity, greenlighting disbursements secured against the supposed valuables. Nagaraj secured Rs. 5.26 lakh through his pledges, while Renuka obtained Rs. 5.32 lakh using her own set of imitations, totalling the hefty sum pilfered from the institution.

The scheme’s exposure began on October 9, 2025, when Renuka returned seeking an additional Rs. 1 lakh loan, aiming to re-pledge items her husband had previously used. Suspicious of the couple’s frequent visits and loan patterns, Shetty ordered a re-verification of account number 19276’s collateral. Instructed to melt down two suspicious globules from the ornaments, Acharya sent samples to a local testing center, where lab results confirmed they were counterfeit. This prompted a full audit of all pledged items from the pair, which uniformly tested as fakes.