3 youths held for Rs 2 crore iPhone fraud in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: With the arrest of three youths, including one who holds a civil engineering diploma, the cyber cell of Lucknow police has busted a gang for allegedly cheating an online shopping giant of about Rs 2 crore in the last two years by siphoning off iPhones after tricking their deliverymen and manipulating scratch cards.

Police have identified the arrested persons as Dhara Singh (a civil engineering diploma holder), Rajkumar Meena (BSc II pass) and Prahlad Singh (a BA passout), all of Rajasthan.

As many as 19 mobile sets, two Apple iPhones worth Rs 1.83 lakh in sealed packets, Rs 3,300 cash, 81 preactivated SIM cards, several other items and an SUV have been recovered from them.

Police claim they were in the ‘business’ since 2017 and had committed fraud in Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow and other metro cities.

As per their confession, the miscreants first applied for online seller on the company website and availed promotional gift cards, which were transferred to their Amazon Pay wallet after scratching. They then returned the gift cards after pasting a scratch tape on it and terming it invalid. This way they used to collect money in online wallet on a smart phone.

The miscreants then used the money in the wallet to purchase smart phones via online shopping. After the deliveryman reached their house to deliver the goods, they engaged him in frivolous talks and replaced the phones with some other object like soap cake and then place request for order cancellation.

They used to sell the mobile phones at dirt cheap prices in Jaipur.

The miscreants had also made fake email IDs using pre-activated SIM cards. Even their addresses turned out to be fake when the company officials contacted the house owner.

Their fraud was detected when the online company checked the returned gift vouchers and goods they received as returned items. After the revelation, officials manning the job of distribution of items to customers in Lucknow petitioned senior police officers, who instructed the cyber cell to work on the case.

Cyber cell nodal officer Abhay Mishra said, “We used cyber and surveillance technology to nab the miscreants. They are being interrogated and others involved in the crime would also be nabbed soon.”