Chennai YouTuber sets up shop at airport for smuggling gold, earns ₹3 crore in two months

A souvenir shop at Chennai airport has been exposed as a front for a Sri Lankan gold smuggling syndicate.

Updated on: Jul 2, 2024, 09:12:22 IST

Edited by Sanya Jain

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A souvenir shop at Chennai airport has been exposed as a front for a Sri Lankan gold smuggling syndicate. The shop’s owner, Mohammed Sabir Ali, was recruited by the syndicate to help them smuggle gold, reported The New Indian Express.

A shop at Chennai airport was revealed to be a front for gold smuggling (File Photo)

Customs have arrested Ali and seven of his employees for their role in smuggling 267 kg gold worth ₹167 crore over a period of two months.

Ali set up a retail souvenir shop, Airhub, at Chennai airport’s departure lounge. Sources say that a member of the Sri Lankan gold smuggling syndicate, living in Abu Dhabi, paid ₹70 lakh to help Ali get the lease for the shop.

The syndicate recruited 29-year-old Sabir Ali after seeing videos of his YouTube channel, shoppingboyz, even though he had no prior experience of running a shop. It was also the syndicate that suggested the idea of opening a shop at Chennai airport to help with gold smuggling.

How the man's scheme worked

Ali and his seven employees were trained by the syndicate - through their shop, they received gold from transit passengers and gave it to receivers outside the airport. For this, the former YouTuber and the employees received a commission of ₹3 crore for two months.

However, their scheme unravelled on June 29 when a Customs official, who suspected one of the employees, found 1 kg gold powder at the shop. The employee as well as the transit passenger who smuggled the gold were taken into custody, followed by the arrest of Ali and his other employees.

The Customs department is now investigating how all eight members of the group possessed identity cards issued by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), as they were only contract employees. Because of these identity cards, they were not subjected to security checks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More