Man arrested for duping two online portals of Rs 36 lakh

Cyberabad Police today arrested a 25-year-old man, who along with his family members allegedly duped two big e-commerce portals of Rs 36 lakh, by returning goods to these online firms after removing hardware parts from the equipments.
The accused, P Veera Raghava Reddy who repairs computers for a living, was arrested with 120 SIM cards that were procured using fake IDs, Vanasthalipuram Police Station Inspector B Pushpan Kumar said.
Veera operated a gang with his family members-his elder brother P Ramchandra Reddy, mother Sitha Rathnam, wife Naga Laxmi and sister-in-law Sindhura-who conspired and cheated online shopping companies, Flipkart of about Rs 20 lakh and Amazon of about Rs 16 lakh, the Inspector said.

The modus operandi of the accused was that they placed orders of items like computer processors, hard disks, other electronic devices on the portals using fake e-mail IDs, phone numbers and different addresses.
They would then return the devices after removing hardware parts or chip from the articles or replaced the same with a duplicate one, the police officer explained.
"Likewise, the gang members returned the articles at least two to three times by removing an important component from the ordered article and finally used to send a request to the companies to refund the amount as they were not satisfied with the product. On removing/replacing the component/article, they sold the same to others," police said.

The gang members gained about Rs 55 lakh out of which they spent Rs 10 lakh, while police freezed Rs 45 lakh. All their banking transaction accounts were also being verified to determine if they indulged in any other cheating activities, the Inspector said, adding, efforts were on to arrest the other accused.