Four held for e-wallet transaction fraud

LUCKNOW:After the arrest of four people, the UP Special Task Force (STF) on Wednesday claimed to have unearthed a racket involved in fraud by using cash back schemes of prominent e-wallet company and a local store.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) of Special Task Force Abhishek Singh said the initial probe by STF cyber wing team found money transaction of over ₹2.5 crore for purchase of different products through different e-wallet accounts in just two months in May and June. He said the four miscreants procured around ₹28 lakh as cash back amount through fraudulent means in past two months.

The SSP said the four arrested people included two employees, Vicky Asthana and Mohd Feroz, of Value Plus stores of Mahanagar and Vikas Nagar while their two other accomplices are Vinod Kumar Singh and Akhilesh Kumar. He said the fraud was being done by manipulation of digital data of customers and products sold by stores. Initially we have detected fraud conducted by three different methods, he said.

Explaining the tricks, additional superintendent of police (ASP) of STF Cyber Wing Suniti said the first trick is by showing the payment transaction of those customers who do not use e-wallet, by creating multiple e-wallet accounts using different mobile numbers. She said the miscreants showed those customers’ payment by different e-wallets and got 10% cash back including 4% from the e-wallet firm and 6% provided by the local store.

She said another trick applied

THE FRAUD WAS BEING DONE BY MANIPULATION OF DIGITAL DATA OF CUSTOMERS AND PRODUCTS SOLD BY STORES

by the miscreants was by showing exaggerated prices of the sold products and getting extra cash back benefits by making the payments using different e-wallet accounts.

She said the third trick was of showing unsold products of the local store as sold products and getting the cash back benefits. “The two local store employees had the passwords of the stores’ accounts, so they used to easily show unsold products as the sold ones and cleared transaction verification process without actually doing the transactions,” she explained.

The ASP said the local store owner detected the loss while analysing the sales data and approached the STF suspecting some fraud. She said the store owner had detected this fraud in their sales record of May and June but the STF probe revealed that the fraud was taking place since March.

“According to the store owner, the fraud of ₹17 lakh was done by them but the STF probe detected the fraud of at least Rs 28 lakh through e-wallet transactions of ₹2.5 crore through fraudulent means,” she said.

Suniti said the STF is writing a letter to the e-wallet firm to review their process as similar fraud is likely to be done from other stores providing cash back schemes to benefit their customers on doing transactions through e-wallet accounts.