Mumbai: Four held for duping e-commerce firm of Rs 34 lakh by swapping parcel stickers

An official said that the police recovered goods, a car and a tempo collectively valued at Rs 45 lakh from the accused.

Mumbai: Mumbai Police have arrested four members of an interstate gang allegedly involved in cheating an e-commerce company of more than Rs 34 lakh by exchanging the stickers of goods parcels, officials said.

The accused people used to order one costly and two cheap electronic or electrical products at a time from the e-commerce company's website. Instead of accepting the order on the given address, they used to collect it mid-way by conspiring with the delivery boys, an official said on Tuesday.

After accepting the delivery, they used to remove stickers (of product details and price) from the parcels. They pasted low-cost product stickers to expensive items and high-cost product stickers to cheaper goods, he said.

They would then return cheaper products as costly items to the e-commerce company and keep the expensive goods with them, he said.

By using this modus operandi, the gang had duped the e-commerce company of lakhs of rupees, senior police inspector Laxmikant Salunkhe said.

On Monday, the crime branch officials received information that the gang members were coming to Borivali in Mumbai to accept an order delivery, he said.

Accordingly, a trap was laid in Borivali (West) and the police arrested four gang members, hailing from Haryana and Chhattisgarh, the official said.

The police recovered goods, a car and a tempo collectively valued at Rs 45 lakh from the accused, he added.