E-COMMERCE FRAUD TRAIL LEADS TO 60 WEBSITES POWERED BY SEO TOOLS; 5 HELD

NEW DELHI: A day after five people were arrested from Mayapuri and Nilothi for allegedly running multiple fake e-commerce websites to dupe over 10,000 unsuspecting buyers from across the country, police said on Wednesday that the suspects used search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques — a process to increase the traffic to their website from search engines — to lure their victims.

Police said the suspects -mastermind Vijay Arora (37) and his aides Manmeet Singh (29), Avtar Singh (32), Raj Kumar (30) and Pradeep Kumar (32) -were allegedly behind over 60 such fake e-commerce websites that were used to dupe victims of around ₹25 crore over the last three years.

According to police, Arora, who has done a hotel management course, previously worked in a five-star hotel in Lucknow in 2014 and even launched a courier company a year later.

In 2019, he began creating fake e-commerce websites offering items like clothes and electronics at throwaway prices but rarely delivered the products. He initially got Manmeet, Avtar and Rajkumar to help run the operation. He later roped in Pradeep, a recently graduated engineer from Karnataka, to help him with SEO techniques to push more traffic to his websites.

Explaining the modus operandi, deputy commissioner of police (cyber cell) Anyesh Roy said, “If something costs ₹4,000 in the market and a website is offering the same item at discounts up to 60%, people will buy the item without checking the credibility of the website. Since there was no option to pay on delivery, customers paid for them online.”

The DCP said less than 10% of the consumers complained on consumer forums. “Some reached out to us, after which we constituted teams to investigate. All of these complaints led to the same set of people, who were later nabbed on the basis of a tipoff,” said the deputy commissioner of police.

Police said in the last three years, they had cheated more than 10,000 customers.