BENGALURU: A 37-year-old businessman from KR Puram area alleged that cybercriminals lured him on the pretext of giving him a dealership to sell electric bikes and cheated him of Rs 4 lakh.
Avinash, a resident of Margondanahalli, near KR Puram, told police that he was interested in taking a dealership from an electric-bike company to sell their two-wheelers and applied for it online on January 11 this year. But he never got a reply from the firm.
Meanwhile, on June 17, he found an advertisement in the name of the same bike company on social media. He applied for a second time on the website mentioned in the ad.
“This time, I received a call from a person who introduced himself as Sanjeev Mishra, a representative of the bike company. He assured me of a dealership. They sent a detailed application through email and I filled it up and sent it back on July 27. Mishra and his colleague Rakesh Pandey informed me that I was eligible for the dealership. I transferred Rs 4,10,500 in two instalments to them on August 10,” Avinash said.
According to police, Avinash later tried to contact the suspects over phone, but found the mobile number switched off. He also learnt that the website address of the company was different from the one on which he’d applied for dealership a second time. Avinash approached Whitefield CEN Crime police station on Wednesday and filed a cheating and cybercrime complaint against the suspect duo.
