In yet another case of ecommerce fraud, Bengaluru police has arrested a woman who duped Amazon India of Rs 70 lakh. Exploiting a major loophole in Amazon’s policies, she ordered original products using a fake name, but returned fake, faulty products.
The fraud was unearthed after Amazon discovered a series of fake products being returned, and then found that the source of these returns are the same.
The Modus Operandi
32 year old Deepanwita Ghosh is a native of West Bengal, living in the Rajanna Layout, Horamavu, Agara in Bengaluru, with her husband. She is an engineering graduate, and worked with a professional services firm in the city.
In order to cheat Amazon, she created a fake sellers account in another portal, and started receiving orders from all over the country.
As soon as an order was received by this fake seller id, she used to make a parallel order of the same product on Amazon, and used to order that item, using that customer’s address. Now, as soon as the product was delivered, Deepanwita used to receive the cash in her account.
So far so good.
But the fraud started from here. Once the order was delivered to her customer’s address, she used to place a return request, using another address. In the return package, she used to send back duplicate, fake products.
This way, she received the payment twice, for the same product: First time from the actual customer using a fake seller account, and the second time from Amazon, by returning a duplicate product.
How This Fraud Happened?
Earlier, Amazon India didn’t check the product being returned, under their C-return platform. And this loophole was mercilessly exploited by Deepanwita.
Ajay Hilori, deputy commissioner of police, Bengaluru east, said, “Every time, the delivery address was different from the C-return address; they were often in different cities. After getting a repayment from Amazon to her bank account, Ghosh would replace the product with a substandard one and hand over the package to the delivery person,“
After Amazon found a series of duplicate products in return packages, they started investigating the cases, and soon found the source of all such returns: Deepanwita Ghosh.
Total of Rs 69.9 lakh was cheated out of Amazon India, using this modus operandi, via total of 109 return orders of expensive items such as smartphones, camcorders, TV and other gadgets.
After Amazon representative Denu T Nair filed a FIR, Bengaluru police has arrested Deepanwita, and she has been to sent to police custody.
We hope that such incidences becomes an example for those, who find it cool to exploit ecommerce portals, and cheat them.