Claiming To Be Online Shopping Firms’ Employees, They Ran Racket From Flat In Rourkela

Rourkela: Police have arrested eight persons following a raid on a flat in Uditnagar in Odisha’s Rourkela for allegedly running an online racket to dupe people of money.

Police said the accused, claiming to be calling from popular online shopping sites like Naptol, Shuddhi Ayurveda, ShopClues etc, would tell people that they have won cash prizes ranging from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, for which they have to pay 1-2 per cent GST.

Several people paid money to the accused online, hoping to receive the prize money without suspecting that the accused weren’t calling from online shopping companies but were cyber frauds running the racket from a well-furnished flat in Uditnagar using 50-55 different cellphone numbers with fake SIM cards, four laptops and three colour printers.

The mastermind of the racket was identified as Pritam Kumar from Bihar. The other arrested accused are from Kerala, Bihar, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

The raid followed a complaint lodged by a resident of Chhend. He received a call from an unknown number. The person on the other side claimed to be calling from Naptol and said he had won a cash prize of Rs 25 lakh, for which he was required to pay 2 per cent GST, which he paid online only to realise later that he had been cheated.

Besides mobile phones, laptops and printers, other items seized from the accused include fake plastic stamp seals, Speed Post bar code stickers, fake scratch coupons and customer application forms of online shopping companies, Rs 60,000 cash etc.