Indore: City crime branch police on Friday arrested two men from Rajasthan and Guna who duped people after posting fake advertisements on OLX. They were allegedly associated with the gang involved in similar crime whose members posed as defence personnel.
Accused who were arrested on Friday told police that they used to receive money in other person’s bank accounts. They didn’t withdraw money from ATM as they used to receive money from cyber café owners who used to take commission from the accused.
Senior Superintendent of Police Ruchi Vardhan Mishra said a gang is active for duping people in more than a dozen states. The gang members had duped people of crores of rupees by posing themselves as defence service officials and sold cars, bikes etc through OLX, a mobile app to sell used items. The conmen introduced themselves army personnel to gain people’s trust who made payment in advance to the accused.
Additional Superintendent of Police Amarendra Singh said police received more than 100 complaints in last one-and-half-years from the city only. A team has been constituted to investigate the matter and to trace the accused.
About 79 people were booked by the crime branch for similar crimes a month back and had arrested two persons. The 79 people are from UP, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Punjab.
During the investigation, a team of crime branch reached Rajasthan and raided many places like Kama, Jhenjhpur, Gari, Jhilpatti, Pahadi, Dimri and arrested Gokul Prasad of Kama in Bharatpur. He had duped a man of Rs 1.5 lakh showing him fake advertisement of selling a car. Officials have recovered his mobile phone and started further investigation.
Another team of crime branch raided a place in Gohad in Bhind district and arrested accused named Vikas Kushwah (20) from there. He had posted a fake advertisement on Instagram for selling i-phone and duped a man of Rs 15,000 when he contacted accused for the phone. Vikas has allegedly confessed his crime after which police have recovered his mobile phone and SIM.
Gokul told the police that he is class VIII pass and is a driver. Some youth residing in his village also duped people through websites. Gokul also learnt to dupe people from those youth and later started to dupe people.
