Engineering student nabbed for cheating jeweller

Bengaluru: The West Cyber Crime, Economic Offences and Narcotics (CEN) Crime police have arrested an engineering student, who cheated a jeweller by faking the payment made towards purchase of silver articles. Over 10 grams of gold jewellery and 1.5 kg silver articles and a camera have been recovered from him.

The arrested has been identified as Prashanth, a resident of Kanakapura, and a student at a private engineering college.

According to police, a goldsmith, TA Suresh from Raja Market, filed a complaint with them on August 17, against an unknown youth who had visited his shop on August 14 and purchased silver diya, plate and a tumbler, all together worth around Rs 1.06 lakh. The customer who pretended to be making the payment for his purchase through UPI informed Suresh that the scanner was not functioning. He borrowed Suresh's phone number and showed him two confirmatory messages on his PhonePe for the payment.

One message confirmed receipt of Rs 56,000 and another for Rs 50,000. Seeing the messages, Suresh believed that the amount had been paid, but the messages were in fact typed by Prashanth to beguile Suresh. Later, Suresh realised the fraud only after a day when he checked his account balance. He replied on the same PhonePe to Prashanth stating that he had not received the amount. As he didn't get any response, Suresh lodged a complaint on August 17. Police inspector Prashanth K and his team collected the CCTV footage from the shop and arrested Prashanth.

During interrogation, police learnt that Prashanth had cheated another jeweller in Ramamurthynagar where he purchased gold jewellery. He had also purchased a camera from a shop in Vijayanagar.

Prashanth started cheating shopkeepers by sending similar messages in Kanakapura for small amounts, after succeeding in cheating. He became greedy and began to cheat people for big amounts.