Six held for 20 crore online shopping scam

Surat: Sarthana police have arrested six persons and uncovered an extensive online shopping scam that has duped countless individuals across India. The accused confessed that the racket was generating monthly profits of Rs 5 lakh to 7 lakh by luring consumers with heavily discounted kitchen and household products, which would never be delivered. Authorities estimate the scammers amassed Rs 20 crore over the course of their 18-month-long fraudulent enterprise. Those arrested are Ashish Hadiya, Sanjay Katariya, Parth Savani, Yash Savani, Sagar Khunt, and Dilip Paghdal. In an exclusive interview with TOI, Sarthana police inspector M B Zala revealed the modus operandi of the scammers. They created numerous websites mimicking popular online platforms with domain names such as offerkkart.shop, flipofferzone.online, flipofferkart.shop and offerflipzone.shop. They would advertise products worth Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 at heavily discounted prices ranging from Rs 300 to Rs 400. Enticed by the seemingly unbeatable deal, customers would transfer money to the provided QR codes. After receiving the payment, the scammers would never deliver the promised products. The probe revealed that the perpetrators procured bank accounts at costs ranging from Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per account to facilitate the collection of their ill-gotten gains. The scam had been operational for over 18 months.During raids conducted on three shops rented by the accused in Surat, authorities seized eight laptops, 98 bank kits, 52 simcards and 21 mobile devices. Further analysis of the seized laptops uncovered more than 1,000 Gmail accounts linked to numerous bank accounts, indicating the extensive scale of the operation. BOX Ads strategically spared Gujarat residents The scammers employed a cunning strategy to evade detection by ensuring that their online offers were not visible to social media users in Gujarat. "If people here paid for their products and did not receive them, they would lodge complaints locally. However, people from outside Gujarat would be less likely to travel to Gujarat for a mere Rs 300-400 loss. This approach allowed the scammers to operate undetected for an extended period," Zala said. Website names were changed every eight days During the raid on their office, Sarthana police discovered at least 19 web domains being used for the fraudulent scheme. These included offerkkart.shop, offervillaa.shop, offerflipzone.shop, offerrzone.shop etc. The scammers would use each domain name for eight days before abandoning them to evade detection.
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