Courier fraud: 6 held for duping man of Rs 2.5L

New Delhi, June 23

Six persons were arrested for allegedly duping a man from the Capital of around Rs 2.5 lakh by claiming an international courier that was being probed by Mumbai Police was booked in his name, officials said on Sunday.

The fraudsters asked him to make the payment to avoid legal hassle, the police said. The accused were identified as Vishal Joshi (24), an engineer from Delhi, and five other graduates — Ansh (24) and Samarth (23) from Haryana, Pranjal Kumar Sahni (24) from UP, Satender Dhaka (29) from MP and Vedant Prabhkar Nagarkar (26) from Maharashtra.

“On April 29, complainant Deepanshu Vaid of Vasundhra Enclave here reported that he received a call from an unidentified number, with the caller impersonating as an employee of an international courier of Mumbai branch,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Apoorva Gupta said.

The caller claimed that a parcel containing passports, bank cards, clothes, a laptop, some cash and drugs had been booked using Vaid’s Aadhaar and phone numbers.

“Later, the call was claimed to be transferred to Mumbai Cyber Police. On the pretext of saving him from legal entanglement, the caller cheated him of Rs 2.49 lakh,” the DCP said.

An investigation revealed that Vaid’s payment was credited to the account of a private bank in Rohtak, belonging to Ansh. Between April 29 and April 30, Rs 3.2 crore was credited to Ansh’s account and later transferred to other accounts, she said.

“The bank was informed on April 30 after the police received the complaint, and Rs 38.23 lakh was frozen in the account,” said the DCP.

Ansh and Samarth were held from Mayur Vihar here. Ansh disclosed that he and Samarth had lost Rs 30 lakh in cryptocurrency trading, after which they came in contact with Pranjal Sahni, who promised the duo profits if they provided their bank account details.

Sahni was arrested from Lucknow and a mobile phone along with documents of Ansh and Samarth were recovered in his possession.

During probe, Sahni disclosed that he and his associate Ashutosh had visited Udaipur, where they provided bank details of Ansh and Samarth to a person, she added.

According to the police, Sahni received Rs 6.24 lakh as commission. Satender Dhaka, who provided Ansh’s account details to others for the fraud, was also arrested later in Delhi using his Telegram account.

He revealed another Telegram ID which was operating from Maharashtra, leading police to Vedant Prabhakar Nagarkar. Nagarkar’s arrest led to Vishal Joshi. All used Ansh’s account for the fraud.