Over 1,000 people scammed of crores of rupees in Ola EV booking fraud, 20 arrested

According to the DCP, a police complaint was filed on October 7 by a victim about the fraud. A case was registered under Section 420 of IPC, following which the technical surveillance started to nab the fraudsters.

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Mahla said the accused operated from Karnataka and Bihar. All work regarding the fake website and providing data from servers to call centres was carried out from Bengaluru, while the call centre was run in Bihar by 16 persons from Karnataka, Telangana, Jharkhand and Bihar, as per the ANI report. The police said the racket hired people from different regions to cater to people across India.

According to the police, two people in Bengaluru had designed a fake website for Ola electric scooters. They used the website to make bookings and uploaded their details for a callback. The scamsters then shared the victims' mobile numbers and other details with their gang members in other states.

Buyers were then called and asked to transfer pay around Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000 in the name of insurance, transportation charges or down payment for the e-scooter.

One of the complainants alleged that he tried to book an Ola electric scooter via the official Ola app on September 26 but failed to do so as there was no finance option that he was looking for.

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He then came across the fake website and made a payment of Rs 499 via the PayU app to book the e-scooter. He then received a booking confirmation slip.

He paid Rs 30,000 via a down payment link that was generated for him by the scammers.

The complainant later got an email stating the sanctioned amount was now Rs 72,000 and the accused asked him to pay again. The accused also asked the victim to pay Rs 13,000 as delivery charges. Later, the complainant registered an FIR, and an investigation was taken up.

In a statement on the official website, Ola clarified that it is not onboarding any dealers, dealerships or other third-party affiliations and no offline sales model of the company exists.

It also mentions that if a person comes across any salesperson or organisation claiming to sell their e-scooter through any website, phone call, poster, social media post, or WhatsApp forward, then he/she must inform the police and report it to Ola’s legal team.

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