Lucknow: The UP Special Task Force (STF) on Sunday arrested a man who had illegally procured data of 14 lakh e-commerce customers and sold them to illegal call centres, which allegedly duped people of over Rs 200 crore in several north Indian states through online fraud since 2016.Police said the accused Nandan Rao Patel was arrested from Gautam Buddha Nagar on a tip off. Several cases were registered against him in Lucknow, Varanasi, Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana.Senior Superintendent of police (STF) Abhishek Singh said Patel ran a firm by the name of ‘Anic World Company’ which provides digital marketing solutions. He lured executives of e-commerce sites by paying them Rs 2 for information about each customer. This customer data was sold by him to illegal call centres for Rs 5 each.”He said Patel and his gang would target customers of online shopping sites like Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, Paytm, Snapdeal, Shopclues and HomeShop18 besides general and life insurance companies.“Thereafter, the communication officers of illegal call centres were asked to call buyers by posing themselves as executives of e-commerce sites with a set script of offering gifts on account of their recent purchase. Later, these gullible customers were called and offered a car, a mobile phone, laptop, or a jewellery,” added the officer.The customers who agreed to these offers were asked to make an additional payment on account of GST and other taxes. Those who cancelled the deal were also asked to make payments. “Once the customers were trapped and payments made via e-wallets, their phones numbers were blocked,” said Singh. Efforts are on to trace the executives of e-commerce sites. This gang had a deep network in Delhi-NCR’s Ghaziabad and Noida and more details about Patel’s trade are being gathered, he said.

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