Online cheating racket busted, 11 held in net

Kolkata: Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station busted an online cheating racket that duped the customers of online shopping portal Flipkart. On Friday evening, cops raided an office near Akanksha crossing in New Town and arrested 11 persons. According to sources, cops got a tip off about some persons, who called up the customers of Flipkart and said they won I-phone and LED televisions against their purchases. The accused persons also used to tell the customers to purchase more items in order to get the prize. To make the payment, the racketeers provided an e-wallet number. But, after paying the amount the customers did not get anything.

On Friday evening, cops raided an office building at the Akanksha crossing where the accused persons had hired an office to run their racket. They used to call up the customers using pre-activated SIM cards. They also had the customer database of Flipkart. During the raid, cops found several laptops, hard disk of computers, a good number pre-activated SIM cards, cash worth Rs 93,690, database documents of Flipkart customers and ATM cards of different banks. Cops came to know that it was an interstate racket. It is suspected that some employees of Flipkart had connection with the racketeers. Police are contacting the Flipkart authorities to find out how they got the database of the customers.

The arrested persons have been booked under sections 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC and 21 (Using unauthorised telegraphs) of the Indian Telegraph Act.