Karan Abhishek Singh, a PepsiCo employee from Gurgaon became the recent victim of car fraud. He was duped of his car and Rs. 20,000 cash by a fraud named Aakash Bajaj who introduced himself as an HCL employee from Noida. The accused gave Singh a fake cheque of Rs. 7 lacs and ran away with his Honda City car.
The conman and Singh came in contact due to an advertisement Singh posted on a car portal to sell his Honda City 2009 model. Singh said, "Bajaj came to take a test drive last Friday and we finalised the deal for Rs. 6.8 lacs. In the evening, he called saying that he was getting a draft of Rs. 7 lacs from HCL and wanted Rs. 20,000 cash in return to repair the interiors of the car." Singh further added that Bajaj looked decent and took names of few senior HCL employees.
Telling more about this, Singh said that Bajaj came with the cheque on Saturday and took away his Honda City. Singh however was glad that he kept the original registration papers and a copy of car keys. He further said that the copy of Bajaj's passport which he had taken for reference also turned out to be false.
As the banks remain close on Sunday, Singh went to drop the cheque on Monday and that is when got to know the real picture. The branch manager of the bank informed that it was a fake cheque. He told Singh that the crook had either scanned or imitated a coloured copy of a real cheque and then printed it with the desired sum.
When the call details of the accused were checked by the police, it led them to a man called Saurabh in Gurgaon who was Bajaj’s next target. However, he was saved from falling prey to Bajaj’s trick. Saurabh told that he had fixed a deal of Rs. 9.8 lacs with Bajaj to sell his Toyota Corolla. Just like Singh, Bajaj had told Saurabh that he will give him a cheque of Rs. 10 lacs and will take Rs. 20,000 in return.
Ashwini Kumar, Assistant Sub-Inspector said, "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. He will be nabbed soon.”
