Five held, 4 juveniles apprehended for cheating on pretext of offering distributorship

New Delhi, Aug 8 (PTI) Five people were arrested and four juveniles apprehended for allegedly duping a person of Rs 50 lakh on the promise of offering distributorship of a tobacco company, the Delhi Police said on Tuesday.

The accused have been identified as Nishant Gupta (27), Suraj (29), Deepak (27), Santosh (27) and Sunil Shakya (41), they said.

They developed fake websites having striking resemblance to the genuine ones by using their domain names, police said.

A case was registered on April 25 based on the complaint of Gulshan Chadha in which he alleged that he received calls from unknown numbers. The caller told him that they were executives of a reputed company, a senior police officer said citing the complaint.

They lured the complainant into investing Rs 50 lakh on the promise of offering him distributorship of the firm. Later, the complainant realised that he had been cheated, police said.

The accused were operating from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Police apprehended four juveniles from Patna in Bihar. Later, Gupta was arrested. Gupta used to entice minors into opening bank accounts after changing their date of birth in their Aadhaar cards, Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) Prashant Gautam said.

The accounts were used in the transactions of the cheated amount. The cheated money was also found in the account of Deepak who was also arrested in Patna. Thereafter, Santosh was also arrested from Patna, Gautam said.

Suraj, who developed the website, was arrested from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, and Shakya was arrested from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, the DCP said.

Shakya accepted that he ran online campaigns and ads for the distributorship of the company on the Internet by giving false toll-free numbers in the advertisements.

The customer details collected from social media platforms were sent to Santosh, and in return, Shakya was paid 30 per cent of the money the victims were defrauded of, the DCP said.