The Mumbai police busted ‘Fake Vodafone Sim Card Scam‘, and arrested a 23-year old for allegedly duping many government employees over the past two years by promising them Vodafone GSM Mobile SIM card with a Lifetime-validity for only Rs 1,200 along with Free Calling to own network and cheapest local calling to other network which was a fake scheme.
The accused, who pretended to be a sales executive of the leading mobile service provider Vodafone Essar, would hand out non-active Vodafone SIM cards to his victims. According to the police, the accused, identified as Mohammed Salman alias Babloo alias Salim, landed in the police net when he tried to sell a Vodafone SIM card to a Bombay Electric Supply and Transport Company (BEST) employee in Dadar area of Mumbai.
Babloo has so far duped employees of BEST, BMC, Railways, State Transport and Other Government Departments in the city. The police are on the lookout for two other members of the gang of which Babloo was the kingpin.
In January, Babloo went to the BEST workshop in Dadar-Mumbai and introduced himself as a Vodafone executive. He circulated pamphlets offering a monthly mobile rental scheme with lowest local calling charges meant only for BEST employees—calls made to numbers of the same company would be free of cost, while those to other numbers would be charged 10 paise per call.
I found the scheme very interesting. So I paid the money and submitted all the documents he asked for. I even got a second SIM card free on purchasing the first. The ‘executive’ said both the cards would get activated within two days. Three other employees also paid Rs 1,200 each,’’ Sayanath Kondu, an employee of the BEST workshop in Dadar.
When Kondu and others found out that they had been duped, they feared their personal documents would be misused. A complaint was filed at the Matunga police station in January 2009 and the FIR was registered on June 15. The police are interrogating Babloo about the documents collected from the victims.
Other than BEST employees, a Ticket collector, Shailendra Singh of Central Railway, had also been duped, said senior inspector S L Deshmukh of Matunga-Mumbai police.Deshmukh added that the accused used to work as an executive with a cellphone service provider. “We have informed the company about the fraud and it has offered its cooperation to help solve the case,’’ he said. Babloo has been booked for cheating and has been sent to police custody till June 22.
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