Refund scam: Engineering student cheats Amazon of Rs 3.7 lakh
An engineering student has been arrested for cheating more than Rs 3.7 lakh from Amazon by taking advantage of the refund policy.
An engineering student has been arrested for cheating more than Rs 3.7 lakh from Amazon. According to Times of India, the student, Chirag Gupta, aged 22, ordered Apple iPhones and other electronic products on Amazon and chose to return the products. However, he never returned them to the e-commerce platform even after getting a refund for the return.
The police has arrested Chirag Gupta and 12 of his friends. They have reportedly used the refund scam to get over Rs 20 lakh from Amazon.
Chirag Gupta and the 12 others are engineering students in Bangalore. All of them have been served notices to appear before the police.
The Amazon representatives filed a complaint about miscreants of cheating the company by getting refunds for the products without actually returning them in May.
As per reports, the student ordered four iPhones on Amazon between May 15 and May 17 and made online payments. Then he choose to return them and to get a refund of more than Rs 3.7 lakh. However, Amazon staff found later that Chirag has not returned the the products to the warehouse.
Chirag, along with his group, also ensured that the Amazon website reflected that the products had been returned, Zonal Manager of Amazon, Paramesh HD, said in his complaint to Yeshwantpur police station, the report added.
We have asked Amazon representatives to share the details of employees handling the website and related issues. We feel the cheating would not have been possible without an insider role, Devaraju said.
Devaraju said that Chirag and his friends were operating according to instructions from the prime suspects. Devaraju added that the students were aware of the fact that they were duping Amazon. Besides, the prime suspects and the students had an agreement to give students a 15-20 per cent commission for cheating.
The police have seized 16 Apple iPhones, two MacBook laptops, one mobile phone, one desktop with hard disk and one air cooler. All the items were ordered from Amazon and marked for return. The products are worth more than Rs 20 lakh, the ToI report said.
