A hardware technician took e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon for a ride, pocketing nearly Rs. 36 lakh.
The accused – P. Veera Raghava Reddy, 25, was arrested by the Vanasthalipuram police of Cyberabad on Friday. A hunt is on for his elder brother, mother, wife and sister-in-law who abetted him, L.B. Nagar DCP Tafseer Iqbal, said at a press conference.
After failing his 10{+t}{+h}standard exams, Reddy learnt computer hardware and was making a living by repairing and assembling computers. Now and then, he purchased computer parts by placing orders online and learnt that the articles could be returned if they were of poor quality.
He found an opportunity to make money by misusing the provision. Reddy would purchase hard discs and write to the company that the hard discs were not as per the standards. He would take out the chips and processors -which are costly- from the hard discs.
“The unsuspecting courier boys would collect the hard discs from him but they would not be able to notice that the chips were removed from them,” Vanasthalipuram Inspector B. Pushpan Kumar said. Sometimes, he returned two to three hard discs on a single order.
The company executives grew suspicious and kept his account in abeyance. But Reddy went on creating new email ids and acquired new mobile phone numbers and placed orders using them. The police seized 120 Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards from him which he purchased from Visakhapatnam after his arrest.
Reddy made money by selling the processors and chips he had stolen. Investigators found Rs. 45 lakh, which he accrued in this fashion, in his bank accounts. The police directed bank officials to freeze the accounts.
Unsuspecting courier boys would collect the hard discs from him but they would not be able to notice that the chips had been removed
