Posing as a prospective buyer, a man allegedly duped an engineer of his smartphone, which he was trying to sell in an online marketplace, on Saturday.
The victim, Ankur Singhal, 25, is a resident of BTM Layout. He works as an engineer in an IT firm. He had put up an ad to sell his smartphone. On July 11, a person identifying himself as Balaji called and expressed interest in the phone. They fixed a meeting in a pizza joint on the Outer Ring Road at Marathahalli.
Balaji then called Ankur to say that he would not be able to make it. He asked Ankur to hand over the phone to Pooja, his partner, who was waiting for him in the pizza outlet.
Ankur handed over the phone to Pooja. Within a few minutes, Balaji called Ankur to say that he had transferred ₹29,500 to his account online and asked him to check if he had received a message confirming the same. Ankur had received a message stating that the sum had been credited to his account.
The fraud came to light when Ankur checked the balance in his account. Based on his complaint, the Marathahalli police are verifying CCTV footage to identify Pooja and are trying to track down the duo. Ankur claimed that Balaji had forged the message to make it look like a bank alert and sent it to him so that he would hand over the phone to Pooja.
