On Tuesday, Delhi police arrested Shivam Chopra (21) and Sachin Jain (38) for allegedly cheating Amazon by ordering 166 expensive mobile phones and then claiming refunds amounting to Rs 50 lakh alleging that the firm had delivered an empty box, reported PTI
Their modus operandi
Shivam, used to order expensive mobile phones using different customer accounts and phone numbers.His accomplice, Sachin. had provided him with nearly 140 SIM cards for this.
Once the items get delivered they used to register complaints saying that no items were found in the delivered box. Later, they would sell the mobiles either on OLX or Gaffar market in Delhi.
This is not the first case where a customer manipulated the return policy to trick e-commerce websites,Here is a list of other such frauds.
- In 2015, the Cyberabad police arrested a 25-year-old man Pulagam Veera Raghava Reddy and his family for cheating Amazon and Flikart of Rs 36 lakh. They used to place orders using fake email ids and after delivery of the product, they replaced it with duplicate item and filed complaints with the site for sending a bad quality products. Later, the company would either replace the item or issue a refund in cash.
- Yahiya Mohd Ishaque and his brother-in-law Mohd Shahroz Ansari in Hyderabad used to order online electronic goods. When the delivery boy reached their address, one of them would engage the boy in a conversation while the other would smartly take the package inside and replace the item with sand. Eventually, they confused delivery boys saying that they have no balance in their accounts and then apologize. The box, now filled with sand, would be returned to the deliver boy.
- In December 2015, police arrested two techies named Atul Sharma and Naveen Kumar who deceived Flipkart of an i-Phone worth Rs 51,590.After receiving the package he claimed that it contained rubber and paper and no phone. Flipkart immediately refunded the entire amount back to their account.
- In a similar incident in December 2016 two engineering graduates allegedly cheated an e-commerce company of Rs 1.05 crore and 152 expensive mobile phones by falsely claiming that they were delivered empty boxes.
- Berhampur police arrested an online racket that cheated different online shopping companies of Rs.20.79 lakh. They had employed 10 youths at salary of Rs.6,000 per month to do online shopping for them throughout the day through fake identities.After recieving the order they used to replace it with similar cheap item and would claim for a refund that used to get credited to their bank accounts.
