3 ex-employees arrested for fraudulently selling firm’s 2,634 mobile phones worth ₹3.30 crore

MUMBAI: Unit 11 of the crime branch on Monday night arrested three former employees of a Malad- based company for allegedly selling 2,634 expensive android mobile phones worth ₹3.30 crore belonging to the firm and pocketing the sale proceeds.

The accused have been identified as Imran Sharfulla Khan, 38, of Kurla, Swapnil Pote, 29, of Virar and Imran Mirza Baig, 35, of Goregaon.

According to the police, the complainant Samrat Sengupta runs Shortformats Digital Productions Private Limited, which deals in digital content, technology and mobile insurance. Apart from providing services to mobile insurance companies, the firm also buys damaged mobile phones and gets them repaired through one of their firms and resells them.

While Imran worked as head of the firm’s insurance business, Pote handled logistics and Baig used to look after the approval of the insurance.

In November 2020, during the course of their investigation, the Versova police found that one of the company employees, Bhushan Shelke, had sold a mobile handset in the open market after showing that the handset had been damaged beyond repair.

The company management thought it was an isolated case and ignored it. However, in December 2020, the complainant received a list of 350 android mobile phones along with their resale price on Whatsapp. On checking the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of the phones in the list, the company found that all of them were shown ‘completely damaged’ in their record.

The company in its inquiry found that apart from Shelke, three more of its ex-employees were involved in the fraudulent practice.

Based on the internal inquiry, the complainant had filed a written application to senior police officials, who routed the matter for investigation to Unit 11 of the crime branch. An FIR was registered at Dindoshi police station recently and the crime branch arrested the trio on Monday night.

In its investigation, the crime branch unit found that the accused replaced 2,634 expensive, repairable mobile phones of the various brands with dead phones and claimed that the handsets received by the company were completely damaged. The accused then got the phones repaired and sold them, assistant police inspector Vishal Patil of Unit 11 said.