Man dupes firms of costly phones, invests money in gold | Kolkata News

Kolkata: Bhowanipore PS, with help of Lalbazar cyber cell, arrested a “lone wolf”, who duped firms of costly phones and invested the money in gold. He chose to stay in hotels across the city while carrying out his operations with only a rucksack.Accused Manoj Agarwal used his experience of running a mobile phone business at Chandni Chowk to the hilt. He reportedly used a rarely employed tactic to lift iPhones worth Rs 8 lakh. “Agarwal called up a Sarat Bose Road-based mobile phone trader sometime on Sept 24, offering him a bigger cut (7% instead of 5%) if he bought 24 iPhones from the main distributor. The trader was asked to pay the distributor directly and then produce a screenshot of the payment. When the trader did as directed, the accused went to the distributor, with offices at Tollygunge and Barasat, and asked him to hand over the iPhones, showing them a screenshot of the payment. Thus, he got hold of 24 iPhones worth around Rs 7.8 lakh,” said cops.Agarwal then sold them to smaller shops and told them to pay in four-five separate channels. Cops found that the accused made online payments to accounts of various jewellers in Rajasthan and took delivery of gold from them. He then sold this gold in Delhi and encashed it. He was searching for his next target while sitting at a hotel in Bahadurgarh, Haryana, when KP nabbed him. The accused cheated over 30 traders across India in this fashion, said cops. They added that one of the accounts was a hawala one.“After a nationwide operation, the fraudster was arrested on Oct 13 from Haryana. Preliminary probe revealed that he operated alone and frequently changed his identity, phone number and location,” said Joint CP (crime & traffic) Rupesh Kumar.