Man turns fraudster to fund love for high-end gadgets

A craze for high-end electronic gadgets turned an ex-call centre executive into a fraudster who allegedly duped foreigners of over Rs 11 lakh by stealing their credit cards details and using them illegally to shop online.

A craze for high-end electronic gadgets turned an ex-call centre executive into a fraudster who allegedly duped foreigners of over Rs 11 lakh by stealing their credit cards details and using them illegally to shop online.

The ex-BPO employee, Vineet Kumar Jha, made several successful transactions until he ran out of luck on Monday and landed in the Delhi Police net. Jha, 22, is a commerce graduate from Open School of Learning, Delhi University.

According to police, before turning into a fraudster, Jha worked with several private call centres in Noida and Gurgaon.

Jha, who was arrested by a team of the economic offences wing (EOW) of crime branch, quit his last job around two months back, a police officer said.

Sandeep Goel, joint commissioner of police (EOW), said Jha was arrested following an investigation into a complaint lodged by the owners of an online sale-purchase portal.

The complainants, Goel said, had told them about unauthorised purchase of goods on their website using stolen credit card information.

"It was alleged that one of the users of their website, Vineet Jha, a resident of Palam Colony, Delhi, had been carrying out suspicious transactions using details of various credit cards. As the complainant company was using the payment gateway of a private bank, the bank was alerted about the suspected transactions," said Goel, adding that a case was registered and investigation was started.

During investigation, it was revealed that the IP address of the computer used in the transactions belonged to Vineet Jha and he was arrested, the officer said.

"He actively engaged in online shopping and was giving different addresses and telephone numbers for the delivery of goods. During the fraudulent purchases over the past two months, Jha had purchased several phones such as Nokia E-6, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note, i-phones and made payments by using credit card details of persons residing abroad," added the joint commissioner of police.