Jewellery agent arrested for cheating customers of ₹13 lakh

An agent for Chemmanur Jewellers in Navi Mumbai has been arrested for cheating customers out of ₹13 lakh by issuing forged certificates.

Navi Mumbai

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One of the agents appointed by Chemmanur Jewellers has been arrested by Vashi police for cheating various customers to the tune of ₹13 lakh by issuing forged certificates of the jeweller against their investments.

The accused arrested has been identified as Vashi Balamurali Menon was arrested this week and is currently under police custody of Vashi police.

In 2013, Chemannur Jewellers, had launched a scheme wherein the customer had to make advance payment for buying gold and could book gold jewellery. If the price of gold went down at the time of purchase, the customer could take advantage of the same and in case, it went up, they could buy the gold as per the gold rate during the time of booking. At the time of booking, the customers were given receipts and company certificates from jewellers as proof of their investment. Also the jewellers would buy old gold from the customers and in return sell them new gold jewellery as per their required design.

Fifty agents were appointed to work for this scheme and accordingly they sold the scheme by doing door-to-door marketing. Menon, who was one of these 50 agents, used the opportunity to cheat the jewellers. He first gained the trust of customers and the jewellers by getting business in the right way and later he started keeping the money to himself and issuing fake certificates.

The incident came to light after one of the customers Santosh Thomas produced such a certificate given to buy gold from the company’s office in Vashi last October. The vigilance department of the company began investigating the transaction done by Menon and found that the paper, color and signature in the original certificate was different from the one possessed by Thomas. The investigations showed that that it was a forged certificate.

“After they found that the accused cheated close to seven customers of ₹13 lakh, a case was registered with us last week and we arrested the accused. There are chances that there could be more such victims and further investigations are on,” said senior police inspector Shashikant Chandekar from Vashi police station.