Thursday, July 12, 2018

Man dupes 25 people with firm’s fake online profile


12/7/2018

PUNE: Creating fake online profile of a logistic firm, a man duped 25 people across India of over Rs 10 lakh in the past two months accepting business contracts.

The conman took advance from people but did not render any service to the clients. Yogesh Chandra Mishra (30), an employee of a transport company in Navi Peth, lodged a complaint with the Vishrambaug police, stating that the man used his company’s name, GST and PAN card details in the fake profile.

The police have registered a case of cheating and an offence under the Information Technology (IT) Act. Investigations revealed that the conman duped people from Chennai, Kolkata, Nashik, Delhi, Jabalpur, Gujrat and other parts of India. Mishra’s transport company has a few trucks. It has been in freight business for the past three years.

On May 2, a truck had gone to deliver some industrial components to Beed and was to return empty. The transport firm’s officials uploaded a query on an e-commerce website, and they received a call within a few minutes. The customer asked one of the company officials to send their bank account, PAN, GST number and other details. The information was shared with the possible customer.

After exchanging the information, the company officials started receiving calls from different parts of the country stating that they had booked the truck of the firm for cargo transportation. They claimed to have paid advance, but the truck did not turn up to pick up the freight.

The FIR stated that a man from Kolkata had transferred Rs18,000 to the account of the suspect. Similarly, people transferred money ranging from Rs10,000 to Rs 50,000 to the account of the suspect. The company then decided to verify the matter, the police said.

“An online search revealed that somebody had uploaded a fake profile of the Pune transport company on an e-commerce website and was accepting contracts using its name and other details. The phone numbers provided on the website were different, though,” the FIR states.

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