Liquor Home Delivery: Bhubaneswar Engineer Falls Prey To Online Fraudsters, Loses Rs 80K

Bhubaneswar: A software engineer in the Odisha capital was allegedly duped of Rs 80,000 by a fraud liquor home delivery service provider.

The IT professional claimed that he had ordered for wine after coming across an advertisement on Facebook following which Round Rs 80,000 was debited from his bank accounts. However, he never received the order.

“I called on that number which received online orders for home delivery of liquor from a shop named  ‘Kadambari’, again. The person who attended the call told me about some registration process and sent a barcode asking me to scan it. When I scanned the code four times on PhonePe, a sum of Rs 79,181 was deducted from my SBI and Standard Charted bank accounts,” he alleged.

He identified the name of the PhonePe number as Narendra Singh. “After a few follow-ups, I received a refund of Rs 3,000 from one Prathamesh Mestry,” he added.

He then went to Chandrasekharpur police station to lodge a complaint. The cops, however, refused to register case since it was a cyber crime.

A day after allowing liquor home delivery through existing ON and OFF shops, the Odisha government on May 26 had cautioned people against falling into the trap of fraudsters using the social media for receiving orders.

A Bhubaneswar resident had then lodged a complaint with the police alleging that he was duped of around Rs 1 lakh after placing order for home delivery of liquor on a social networking site. A case was registered in this regard at Mancheswar police station.

Also Read: On Day 1 Of Online Liquor Sale, Youth Duped Of Rs 36,000 In Bhubaneswar

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On May 27, the state government issued an advisory stating that some food aggregators, technology platforms and service delivery providers have been issued NOC by Excise Commissioner to supply liquor. The names of those agencies are available on OSBC website, it said, adding that only Zomato and Swiggy have been given permission in this regard.