Online oil deals: Hyd-based Universal Catalyst cheated by online fraudulent

Hyderabad: The cybercrime police station has received complaints of cheating in the name of online oil business opportunities.

Shopan Shintre, a resident of Miyapur, fell prey to fraudsters and lost lakhs of rupees. Mukesh Enterprises from Mumbai and Pol Pharma from Poland teamed up to cheat buyers of Tetrapleura oil extract.

Zofia Antoni and Tomasz Moys were named as the contact persons of Pol Pharma and Mukesh Enterprises as the agent for Pol Pharma sales in India. They got connected to Shopan Shintre’s company, Universal Catalyst LLP, based in Hyderabad, online.

“Pol Pharma introduced us to Mukesh Enterprises. We have crosschecked the company’s registration details / PAN / GSTN / bank accounts and found no issues as the online sites were showing correct information as that in the invoice details. Pol Pharma sent us a “Letter of Intent” for sale of 850 litres of Tetrapleura oil extract at the rate of 5500 USD per litre on company letterhead but initially asked us to buy 20 litres for an urgent requirement,” said Shopan Shintre.

Mukesh Enterprises quoted a price of Rs 1,25,000 per litre, with a refund guarantee of 99% of the purchase value. Shopan Shintre thought there is a risk of Rs 25,000 but decided to go ahead with the deal and transferred a total of Rs 25,00,000 into two bank accounts of Mukesh Enterprises.

“After that, there was no response from Mukesh Enterprises and when we tried to call up Pol Pharma for crosschecking, we found the email ID and mobile numbers of Zofia Antoni and Tomasz Moys to be fake. Pol Pharma said the duo were not their employees and then we realised that it was a fraud,” said Shopan Shintre.

The police said that fraudsters were approaching the gullible through online platforms like LinkedIn, Justdial, India Mart, Facebook, Instagram and luring the businessmen by offering best deals.

These companies/individuals make the gullible transfer hard-earned money into their accounts. Of late, the fraudsters are trying to lure people by sending emails to entrepreneurs,” the police said.

Police also added that the cheats try to evade pinpointed questions by saying that the earlier agents had expired or were removed from job. They also are trying to lure people saying: “We have been searching for new mediators for these business deals. Having seen your entrepreneurship, we selected you as our mediators.”

“Naturally, anyone would be believe they are real oil supplying companies and there is every chance to fall prey to these fraudsters,” the police said.

Cyber crime police are investigating the case and exhorted people to be careful about online transactions.