BENGALURU: A woman has been arrested for allegedly cheating e-commerce giant Amazon India of almost Rs 6991,000. She reportedly made numerous online purchases, returning substandard and cheap lookalikes, later selling the original items on another shopping portal. Deepanwita Ghosh, 32, claimed refunds of lakhs of rupees from the website.
Hennur police identified her as an engineering graduate living in Rajanna Layout, Horamavu, with her husband, employed at a professional services company. As per a complaint lodged by Amazon representative Denu T Nair, Ghosh used fake names and made 104 online purchases of items, including high-end cellphones, SLR cameras, TVs and other electronic equipment. She would sent product return requests within 24 hours, demanding refunds using Amazon's customer return system.
Ajay Hilori, deputy commissioner of police, said, “Every time, the delivery address was different from the C-return address, which was often in other cities. After getting a repayment from Amazon to her bank account, Deepanwita would replace the product with a substandard one and hand over the package to the delivery person.” He said that she had been cheating the company for nearly a year as the firm didn't have the policy of opening and inspecting the product at the time of re-accepting it. An internal probe was only conducted after the company's seller service in Bengaluru spotted that several returned products were not the originals.
The probe revealed that Ghosh operated as a seller on another portal and received customer orders for high-end electronic items after which, she would place a parallel order for each product on Amazon, and got Amazon to ship the product to her clients' addresses in different cities. “Once her customer received the product and Ghosh received cash for it, she would initiate a C-return with Amazon and receive a refund by returning lookalikes,” an officer said.
She was remanded in judicial custody and sent to prison on charges of cheating and online fraud. Meanwhile, the company said it would modify its customer product return policy. “Now, products like cellphones are received from customers only after verifying IMEI numbers and other items following corroboration of unique product codes apart from a thorough inspection. An acknowledgement with the customer's signature is also obtained at the time of return of expensive items,” a company warehouse executive said.
