Delhi man duped Amazon: Ordered 166 phones and claimed refunds

News Network
October 11, 2017

New Delhi, Oct 11:  A 21-year-old who bought over 166 expensive mobile phones from online store Amazon in Delhi and got refunds running into lakhs of rupees after claiming that he had received an empty box has been arrested, the police said.

The police said Shivam Chopra, 21, had made nearly Rs. 50 lakh between April and May this year before Amazon realized that they were being conned and complained to the police.

Shivam Chopra had done a course in hotel management from an institute in north Delhi's Rohini and had tried his hand at some jobs. But he wasn't good at keeping them and had ended up without a job. In March this year, he came up with this idea and ordered two phones as a test case. He asked for a refund, and got it.

For the next two months, he made a business out of it, ordering Apple, Samsung and OnePlus mobile phones.

He would sell the phones either on another online marketplace OLX or Gaffar market, a west Delhi market for mobiles and other imported goods that was counted by the US Trade Representative as one of the world's "notorious markets" in global piracy in 2014.

Sachin Jain, 38, a small telecom store owner near his house who had supplied more than a 141 pre-activated SIM cards to Shivam Chopra to let him place the orders in different names, has also been arrested. He would charge Rs. 150 for each number.

A resident of Tri Nagar in north-west Delhi, Shivam Chopra used these phone numbers to place orders and would give an incorrect address in the locality. When Amazon's delivery associate could not locate the house, he would invariably call on the registered phone number of the account that he was using.

He would then guide him to somewhere close to his current address in the locality, take the delivery. Later, he would call up to complain that the box was empty and get a refund.

"This was repeated for all 166 orders that were placed by the perpetrator," senior police officer Milind Mahadeo Dumbere said.

19 mobile phones, 12 lakhs in cash and 40 bank passbooks and cheques have been seized from the home of the graduate from a north Delhi institute for hotel management. Apart from the money in the bank, he had also kept Rs. 10 lakh with someone for safekeeping.

The north-west district police chief said the police were able to locate the young man this month after months of investigation during which they narrowed down the locality where he probably lived.

Last year, the Hyderabad police had arrested two persons who would tactfully open the seal of the packet while the delivery associate was waiting for payment at their doorsteps, replace the item with sand and reject the item to online retailers such as Amazon and Flipkart. There have been other cases where customers have allegedly replaced the items ordered with similar products of poor quality.

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News Network
May 19,2020

Bareilly (UP), May 19: Samajwadi leader Chhotelal Diwakar and his son, Sunil Diwakar, were shot dead in broad daylight in Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday. The entire incident was caught on camera.

The murder was apparently a fallout of a dispute over laying of a road under MGNREGA.

Chhotelal Diwakar had contested the 2017 assembly elections on a Samajwadi Party ticket.

Superintendent of Police, (SP), Sambhal, Yamuna Prasad, said, "Some work was being carried out under MGNREGA due to which some dispute happened. Two people have been shot dead. We will reach the spot of the incident to find more details."

According to his family members, Diwakar and his son had gone for a walk in the fields when the assailants came on a motorbike and after a brief altercation, shot them dead. They fled on foot, leaving their motorbike behind.

A large number of SP workers reached the village soon after the news of the double murder spread.

SP Yamuna Prasad who reached the spot that falls under Behjoi police station, soon after the murders, said that a manhunt has been launched for the assailants. He said that further investigations were underway and the bodies have been sent for post mortem.

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Agencies
May 6,2020

A man posed as Superintendent of Police (SP), called up a subordinate police official and asked him to get his mobile phone repaired or face the consequences. But, his bluff was later called and the man landed in lockup.

Azamgarh SP Triveni Singh said the 23-year-old youth, Shubham Upadhyay, is the son of a farmer. He was preparing for competitive exams when his phone developed a snag on Saturday. He tried to reach out to local mechanics, but they were unavailable to fix it due to the lockdown.

Upadhyay used a free caller identification app to call up the in-charge of the Kotwali police station, K. K. Gupta, and threatened to shunt him out, if he failed to swiftly get the work done. Gupta grew suspicious and eventually caught the youth.

n his statement to the police, Shubham Upadhyay said, "On Sunday noon, I tried to breach the district borders to reach Lucknow to repair my phone, but since there was heavy police presence and barricading, I returned home. Later, I installed a free caller identification app in my handset and mentioned the name as SP Azamgarh and even uploaded a photo of the cop to appear genuine."

He first called SHO, Kotwali to get the phone repaired and was told the handset would be picked up from the SP office in an hour. Then, he called a businessman to bring his SUV and hand over his mobile to the SHO.

But when Upadhyay called the police again to suggest a separate meeting point, he raised suspicion. When the SHO tried to confirm the venue, Upadhyay got hesitant and said he would send a peon.

"I suddenly realised something was fishy and rang up the public relation officer of SP Azamgarh, who denied any such order from the SP. When the caller's number was scanned, it displayed the name of SP Azamgarh," said SHO Gupta.

A trap was laid and when the SHO reached the venue, he found one Praveen Shukla sitting in the vehicle. Police got the address of the accused from Shukla and reached Upadhyay's home in Bilariya locality and arrested him.

Upadhyay has been booked under IT Act and for threatening a public servant.

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News Network
May 21,2020

Bengaluru, May 21:Tragedy struck an elderly migrant worker who was looking forward to joining his family as he died on reaching a nearby railway station to board a Shramik Special train to his home state Madhya Pradesh, police said on Thursday.

The 69-year old man, who worked in a coffee estate in Chikkamagaluru, collapsed and died soon after getting down from a state-run KSRTC bus that brought him and others to the Chikkabanavara Railway station on Wednesday.

According to police, fellow labourers said he had been ailing for quite some time.

The cause of his death would be known only after a post-mortem, police added.

Karnataka government has been sending back thousands of migrant workers stranded in the state due to the COVID-19 lockdown by arranging the special trains.

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