Delhi police expose Ola e-scooter scam, 20 arrested from around the country

A pan-India Ola electric scooter scam has been exposed. Delhi Police has arrested 20 people involved in the scam that was spread throughout the country. According to a report by ANI, a senior police official has mentioned that the Outer-North district’s Cyber Crime police team has booked the 20 accused of the scam from different parts of the country including — Bengaluru, Gurugram and Patna. The official notes that the accused has trapped more than 1,000 victims and has defrauded almost crores in the name of selling Ola electric scooters and dealerships.
Ola scooter scam busted: How it happened
As per the police official, an investigation into the Ola scooter scam was launched on October 8. The investigation was based on an FIR filed under section 420 of IPC by the cyber police station on October 7.

The official also mentioned that two persons in Bengaluru even created a fake website for the Ola scooter scam. The alleged gang targeted people who enquired about Ola scooters on the website. Mobile numbers and other details of the victims were then shared by the Bengaluru men with their gang members in other states.
Following that, the gang members located in Bihar and Telangana used to contact the victims and asked them to pay Rs. 499 via online transfer to book an Ola scooter. Later on, the gang used to ask the victims to pay Rs. 60,000 to 70,000 as insurance and transportation charges for the scooter.
One of the victims who lodged the police complaint said that he tried to book an Ola electric scooter on the Ola app on September 26, but couldn’t complete the transaction as he was looking for a finance option.

On the same day, he received a call regarding his Ola scooter booking from the gang where he got to know about the offline process of booking. The victim received another call from the same person on the next day and was asked to pay Rs 499 to initiate the booking process. He paid the amount via the PayU app and received a booking confirmation slip of the same.
After that, the victim received a down payment link of Rs. 30,000 via the PayU app on WhatsApp. He also received a mail that suggested that the sanctioned Ola money amount was Rs. 72,000 and the rest had to be paid by the victim. Then, the fraudster asked the victim to pay the remaining amount plus Rs 13,000 in delivery charges to start the dispatch process of the vehicle.