Youth held for cheating people on pretext of selling high-end phones

A 22-year-old youth has been arrested for allegedly cheating people on a social media application on the pretext of selling high-end phones for quarter a price, the police said on Tuesday.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Anto Alphonse said that the accused has been identified as Yogesh Tiwari, a resident of Faridabad.

The police said that they received a complaint from a woman resident of Malka Ganj who stated that she came across a page ‘Foneofy’ which showed that one can buy a high-end phone, which costs over ₹1 lakh, for ₹25,000. The woman contacted the page administrator over WhatsApp and ordered the phone. She also paid ₹24,290, the police said.

The woman, however, didn’t receive the phone for days and when she contacted the administrator, she found that she had been blocked. She then approached the police and a case was registered.

“The police found a video in which a person alleged about the cheating by Foneofy. Online wallet details linked to the alleged mobile phone were also collected from payment gateways. Later, the accused was apprehended from Faridabad,” Mr. Alphonse said.

During interrogation, the accused allegedly disclosed that he downloaded photos and videos of the phone and uploaded on discounted rates on the social media application and cheated interested victims.

“Earlier, he used to buy Chinese phone from Gaffar Market and was sending the same to the cheated people. Later, he stopped even sending mobile phone. The accused has more the 1,04,000 followers in his foneofy page. He also bought followers and promos on Instagram to gain trust of victim prior to payment. He confessed about cheating using same modus operandi with many persons of different States,” Mr. Alphonse said.