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Conman gives fake draft, flees with car
An executive of PepsiCo in Gurgaon was duped of his Honda City and Rs 20,000 by a conman with whom he had struck an online car sale deal. Leena Dhankhar reports.
An executive of PepsiCo in Gurgaon was duped of his Honda City and Rs 20,000 by a conman with whom he had struck an online car sale deal. Accused Aakash Bajaj, claiming to be an employee of HCL in Noida, gave victim Karan Abhishek Singh a fake bank draft of Rs 7 lakh and fled with the car.
Singh had posted an advertisement on an online car portal - www.carwale.com - in January to sell his 2009 model Honda City and was contacted by the scamster.
"Bajaj came to take a test drive last Friday and we finalised the deal for Rs 6.8 lakh. In the evening, he called saying that he was getting a draft of Rs 7 lakh from HCL and wanted Rs 20,000 cash in return to repair the interiors of the car," said Singh, a resident of Vatika City in Sector 49, Gurgaon. He added that Bajaj looked well-educated and dropped names of senior employees at HCL. As Singh's brother had also worked in the Noida firm, he felt assured that Bajaj was a genuine buyer.
"On Saturday, Bajaj came with the bank draft and took the car. I had thankfully kept the original registration certificate and duplicate keys of the car till the bank DD was not cleared into my account. I had taken a copy of Bajaj's passport which turned out to be fake," added the victim.
With banks being closed on Sunday, the PepsiCo executive went to deposit the draft on Monday. And then came the shocker. The branch manager told him that the fraudster had either forged a coloured copy or scanned an original draft and printed it with the changed amount.
"We are investigating to trace the online conversations the victim and the accused had to track the IP address of the computer and the location of the conman," said assistant sub-inspector Ashwini Kumar.
