A 32-year-old man was arrested from Ghaziabad for allegedly duping over 2,500 people on the pretext of providing them mobile phones on EMI through fake websites, the police said on Wednesday.
The accused, Jitender Singh, disclosed that he and his accomplices, Praveen Kumar and Rajat Shukla, defrauded people by promising them cheap mobile phones on EMI. After taking a small amount as down payment from victims, they vanished.
Singh confessed to having duped over 2,500 people. Efforts are being made to trace Kumar and Shukla, the police said. The matter came to the light when a probe was initiated on January 9 on a complaint by one Irfan Pathan, who alleged that last December he wanted to buy a mobile phone and came across a website www.mobilityworld.in, which offered mobiles on EMI for cheap rates, the police said.
Initial deposit
In order to make a purchase, the victim was asked to deposit ₹1,499 by Virtual Private Address (VPA) paymobile@upi . The executives of the website then contacted the victim and asked him to deposit more money as down payment. The victim was told that the mobile will be delivered to him after this. He deposited ₹5,998 in three transactions on the VPA provided by the executive. But he neither got any mobile phone nor did they return his money, according to the complainant.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (south-east) R.P. Meena said that during the course of investigation, call details of the mobile numbers mentioned on the website and those provided by the complainant were obtained. After analysing the call details record, it was found that one of the mobile numbers used by the accused was registered in the name of Rajat Shukla.
On analysing the details of VPA, it was found that the alleged VPA is linked to a bank account of Shukla. The money from the said bank account is immediately credited to the account of the accused. Singh was arrested from his home in Ghaziabad on Tuesday and his two mobile phones were confiscated, the DCP added.
“During interrogation, Singh disclosed that in the last two years, he along with his associates have duped people through three fake websites. They shifted their set up and domain name of websites to avoid detection and took money through VPA to make detection difficult. They often took small amounts ranging from ₹1,999 to ₹7,999 so that the victims would not approach the police,” the DCP said.
