Free Scratch Cards: 5 Mancherial Residents Among 10 Nabbed By Cybercrime In E-Commerce Fraud

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad Cybercrime police arrested an e-commerce fraud gang of 10 people on Monday. They were including five from Mancherial, for cheating people by sending gift scratch cards and application letters in the name of popular e-commerce and telemarketing companies.

The arrested persons were Tarun Kumar from Bihar, Prabhakar Kumar Sinha from Jharkhand, Kamlesh Dubey from Mancherial, Yashwanth Thakur from Madhya Pradesh, Sourabh Patel from Madhya Pradesh, M.Venkatesh, G. Rakesh, E.Prashanth, S.Rajender Reddy, and L.Rajalingu, all from Ranchi and natives of Mancherial. Five suspects, Alok, Tiranju, and Bajrangi from Bihar and Kotesh and Sunil from Jharkhand, were absconding.

At the press conference, Cyberabad Commissioner VC Sajjanar said Tarun Kumar collected the database of customers of different e-commerce websites and prepared fake envelopes in the name of these companies, and sent scratch cards to them by post.

“Customers believed the letters to be genuine, as they had purchased some product or the other from these online e-commerce companies. They fell into the trap and called the fraudsters on the mobile phone numbers given in the post received by them to confirm winning gifts including cars and costly gadgets among others,” Sajjanar said.

The fraudsters, on receiving these calls, would send fake ID cards of e-commerce companies on WhatsApp to convince the customer.

“Once any of the customers believed them, they would start extracting money under the pretext of the registration fee, document charges, GST and Income Tax to claim gifts,” Sajjanar said, adding that the police had seized 42 mobile phones, laptops, rubber stamps and 30 debit cards from the gang.