Four men were arrested for allegedly duping around 4,000 people of approximately ₹1.2 crore through fake websites in the name of registration on Government e-Market place (GeM), police said on Thursday.
The accused were identified as Yash Sharma (24), Tushar Naiyyer (26), Anurag Chug (28) and Suraj Verma (22), all residents of Uttam Nagar, they said. The police said that the accused paid huge sums to Google Ads for getting their fake website listed on top in Google Search results.
Complaint
An action was taken against them after a complaint was received on social media from a citizen stating that he had visited a website www[.]govregistration[.]in, believing, on the basis of its name and appearance, that it is the official website of Government e-Marketplace. He then paid ₹2,999 for registration on GeM as a merchant on the fake website, even though there is no fee charged for such registeration by the government, said the police.
It also came to notice that several others were also duped in same manner through these fake websites, police said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Anyesh Roy said that during investigation, the digital trail and the money trail of the fake websites was identified. It was found that the websites are using various payment gateways for receiving the payments in lieu of the bogus registration fee. It was also found that the sites were registered and hosted on foreign servers for evading detection.
