Man, who scammed customers of e-commerce sites on pretext of scratch-and-win contest, nabbed by police

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A West Bengal native, who was the leader of a gang that targeted customers buying goods from online shopping sites and misled them with a scratch-and-win scam, has been arrested with the help of the Cyber ​​Wing of Thiruvananthapuram Rural Police. The arrested is Bikki Das (22) from Chandiberia in North 24 Fergana Sajarghat in Krishnapur.

He started the scam after collecting the addresses of customers of online shopping sites like Naaptol and Snapdeal from parcel service companies. He'll then send scratch and win cards to customers by registered post. When the card is scratched, the customer will see a message he has won a big prize and is instructed to contact the phone number on the card to claim it. The scammers' method is to extort money from people online on the pretext that they have to pay various charges like service tax, registration charge, gift charge, GST, insurance etc. to get the gift.

The arrest was made in a case where a resident of Murukkumpuzha was duped of Rs 7.45 lakh several times on the pretense of getting a Hyundai car in connection with Naaptol Online Shopping Pvt. There are cases against him in the police stations of Karnataka and Bengal states for committing similar fraud. Phone numbers and bank accounts used for the fraud were fake identification documents. Bikki Das was found after two months of investigation focusing on the IMEI number of his phone.

Bikki Das was arrested from Newtown, Bengal by a team comprising inspector Ratheesh GS, SI Satheesh Shekhar, policemen Vimalkumar, Shyam Kumar and Adeen Ashok of the Cyber ​​police station under the supervision of rural district police chief D Shilpa and DySP Vijukumar. The accused was remanded. The rural police informed that investigation has been intensified against other members of the scam gang.