Pramod Bhamble, a 21-year-old employee of the Amazon’s packaging department has been arrested by the Vithalwadi police in Ulhasnagar for sneaking out expensive electronic items in the guise of delivering pressure cookers.
mid-day reported that he works in the packaging department Amazon’s Bhiwandi warehouse and he thrice packed expensive electronic goods in pressure cooker boxes and delivered it home. He had planned to sell these goods for cheap to any local buyer.
Pramod is a resident of Camp Number 4 in Ulhasnagar. He has been working with the packaging department for the last two and a half years. His responsibilities at the job included packing goods which were ordered by users. It so happened that last week, the Vithalwadi police got a tip-off that a person had been trying to sell expensive electronic items, allegedly stolen from an Amazon warehouse, at cheaper rates. Based on this information, police raided Bhamble’s house and found iPhones, iPads, tablet PCs, cameras, and watches.
He confessed that he had kept some items at his friends’ house. Followed by this information, the police recovered the entire consignment worth a mighty Rs. 8.31 lakh.
So how exactly did he pull out this whole thing?
Pramod’s work let him have an access to the order numbers. He used this to his advantage. He would order pressure cookers from the website under different names, but would get them delivered to the same address i.e. his residence. Using the order numbers, he packed his order himself; but instead of putting pressure cookers in the box, he stuffed it with iPhones, iPads, watches, cameras, and other expensive electronics in the pressure cooker box.
There was another minor challenge he had to dodge, before successfully shipping the products to his own place – the godown also has a mechanism to weigh the package. For this, he stuffed equipment of equivalent weight and he had ordered pressure cookers thrice in the last 15 days. That is, after he placed the order, instead of, say, packing a five-kg pressure cooker, he would stuff gadgets of equivalent weight. After receiving delivery clearance, he would then deliver the goods himself and store it at his house. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone IV) Vasant Jadhav told mid-day,
Bhamble’s job profile was of goods packaging at Amazon.com’s warehouse in Bhiwandi. After we got information that Bhamble was selling electronics from the warehouse at cheaper rates, we started working on the case. On Thursday evening, we caught Bhamble red-handed with the box, near his house. After checking the box, we found a cell phone and other electronic accessories. So, we went to his place and saw he had many such products.
During questioning, he told us he had kept a few of the stolen products at the houses of his two friends. Bhamble had planned to sell the phone to the customer whom he had approached. It was this customer who went to the police. All the products he stole have been recovered.
Subhash Pansare, police sub–inspector, Vitthalwadi police station, said that he had not sold any of them. The major concern for Amazon is that there might be other people like Pramod who are doing the same thing. As such, he had told the police that at least two others had been running a similar scam.
Vijay Dolas, senior police inspector, Vithalwadi police station, said,
In his statement, Bhamble said he saw two to three other people involved in the same activity, after which he also decided to try it. We are investigating into the others as well. On Saturday, some people from Amazon had come to the police station for the inquiry. They said they would carry out fresh audits to verify how many such products have gone missing.
This case was registered under Section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and transferred to the Kongaon police station in Bhiwandi. Till the time of going to press, the spokesperson for Amazon was unavailable for comment.
The news information and image have been sourced from mid-day
