Traders looking to open ‘dark store’ duped out of 50L

Rajkot: A 29-year-old businessman who has an online garment retail business was cheated out of Rs 50 lakh by two men who pretended to be representatives of a grocery delivery app.
Jaydeep Dobariya lodged a complaint at the Rajkot range Cybercrime police station against one Sanjeev Kumar, who claimed to be a relationship manager and R K Tiwari, who pretended to be operations head of the e-commerce company.
Jaydeep stated that he and his brother, Hiren, were looking to open an online store for everyday essentials through an online platform.
After filling in a Google form for inquiries, they received a phone call on Dec 21, 2024, from Sanjeev Kumar, who said he was a relationship manager. Kumar said they had emailed them necessary documents, including a brochure of a laptop company and a list of the documents required to buy a franchise of the delivery app's dark store — which is a micro warehouse used by online retailers to store goods.
Hiren responded with the details of their warehouse and its pin code. The made them make payment on various pretexts such as registration fees, agreement fees, NOC charges, security deposits and franchise fees, for Rs 15.50 lakh. They demanded Rs 11.50 lakh more for a dark store in the Gotri area of Vadodara, in Hiren's name.
Later, Tiwari, who claimed to be the operations head, persuaded Jaydeep to pay for travel and accommodation for a store visit, increasing amount defrauded to Rs 50.30 lakh. Jaydeep transferred the money between Dec 31, 2024, and Jan 22, 2025.
After making these payments, Jaydeep realized he had been defrauded. On Jan 25, he filed a complaint with the Cyber Crime Helpline (1930).