Lucknow: A man and three delivery agents scammed an e-commerce website of Rs 50 lakh in the state capital.
The police have now arrested Sachin Tiwari, mastermind of the gang and his aides Shubham Yadav and Vikas Yadav, Dharamveer Yadav, Ravindra Kumar Yadav and Abhishek Dubey.
The scam surfaced during an internal audit of the company at its Lucknow-based office when bookings of electronic gadgets on fake addresses were found to be stolen between September 23 and September 26. The delivery on these fake addresses was done by the same agents. Later, an FIR was lodged and investigations got underway. Ravindra, Shubham and Dharmveer worked as delivery agents with a company assigned with goods' delivery work and they helped Sachin and others in executing the theft. The police recovered 43 Apple mobile phone sets, seven tablets, one I-pad, 25 USB cables, two bundles of tapes of an online shopping company and other items which they used in opening and repackaging boxes.
Ashutosh Kumar, assistant commissioner of police, said, "Ravindra, Shubham and Dharamveer, in connivance with Sachin, placed orders for electronic gadgets while referring to addresses of their choice. Since they worked as delivery agents, they knew well in advance about the arrival of goods."
He said that after receiving the goods the miscreants used to take out items from boxes, replacing them with clay.
Then they repackaged the boxes in their original shape and later the miscreants returned the boxes to the warehouse, mentioning that addresses of customers were untraceable and finally the boxes were returned to the online shopping company. The online shopping company wrote to the firm engaged in goods' delivery in Lucknow to probe who is replacing items in the boxes with clay, the police said.
The Lucknow-based company conducted a probe and finally the cluster manager lodged an FIR against Ravindra, Shubham and Dharamveer and their leader Sachin. —IANS