Two days later, when the consignment did not reach him by August 30, the complainant called the company and was informed that no such person worked for them.A resident of Rohini in Delhi was allegedly defrauded of nearly Rs 5 Lakh while making payments from his company’s accounts for materials that he had ordered, the police said. Bajrang Pareek, who works for a furniture company, alleged in a complaint to the crime branch on Monday that he was deceived by a man posing as an employee of a prominent steel company. A case has been registered, the police said.
According to the complaint, the complainant had intended to buy steel from the company in question in August last year and had been searching for options on an e-commerce platform after which he received a call from a man who identified himself as Sandeep Chanjogi Gaikward who enquired about the requirements, the complaint said. The two negotiated rates of payment and order quantities for steel in various thicknesses.
Gaikward then sent him a purchase invoice and as he had claimed to work for the steel company’s Mumbai branch, also sent an employee ID photograph as proof, the complaint said. He demanded 60 per cent advance payment from the complainant who went on to make various payments from company accounts, totalling Rs 4,81,018, to a bank account in Maharashtra.
Two days later, when the consignment did not reach him by August 30, the complainant called the company and was informed that no such person worked for them. When the complainant called Gaikward again on September 1 and 2, the latter insisted that the steel was en route, he said.
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On enquiring at the bank in Maharashtra regarding the amount he had paid, the complainant said he was told that the amount had been transferred to a savings account in Jharkhand and that it could not be frozen except through the police. After September 4, Gaikward stopped taking his calls. By then, the complainant had approached Prashant Vihar police station, the North Rohini cyber cell and the station house officer at North Rohini. The case was registered under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.