Woman held for cheating Amazon of Rs 70 lakh

The city police have arrested a 32-year-old woman on the charge of cheating e-commerce giant Amazon of nearly Rs 70 lakh by making online purchases and then returning substandard replicas and selling the original items on another shopping portal.

The arrested was identified as Deepanwita Ghosh, a resident of Hennur and a native of Kolkata. She was taking advantage of the company’s return policy and had made as many as 104 purchases over the past one year, the police said.

The total worth of returns and the loss to the company has been calculated at Rs 69.91 lakh, the police added.

Substandard replicas

According to the police, Deepanwita used to place orders from different email IDs for costly high-end electronic gadgets which she would replace with substandard replicas.

She would then raise a complaint about the ‘defective’ merchandise and demand refund from Amazon. Later, she would pack the original items and sell them on a different online platform, the police said.

Internal probe

Amazon staff monitoring the transactions felt something amiss and decided to conduct an internal probe when they found out the methods used by Deepanwita.

They lodged a complaint of cheating against her and she was arrested from her house in Hennur by the East division police in the last week of April. She was produced before a magistrate who remanded her in judicial custody.