Four held in Noida for posing as owners of flats, cheating people who wanted to rent or buy

According to the police, the accused used to put their advertisement with a mobile phone number on property sale and purchase related websites like 99acres.com, magicbricks.com, and housing.com etc. posing as owners of flat or commercial properties. When a customer checked the ad for the flat or commercial property, the gang received a message on their mobile phone with their name and phone number and then they started the cheating process.

The police said Amitesh alias Karan used to talk to the customer and fixed a time for showing the flat or commercial property. After this, Pushpendra showed the property to the customer and talked to the ‘flat owner’ over the phone. Then, Anil posing as a flat owner talked to the customer over the phone, prepared a rent agreement, and gave a photocopy of the agreement to them.

Mrityunjay used to withdraw the money received in his bank account and distributed it among themselves. All phone numbers and account number was in the name of Mrityunjay, who is originally from Bihar, they added.

Officers said the gang has taken around Rs. 7 lakh from nine people so far.

A case under sections 420, 406, 467, 468, 472, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been registered in the Sector 39 police station. The police have also recovered an ATM card, a passbook and Rs. 20,000 from the accused.