They say ‘Old habit dies hard’. This adage fits a 23 years old ‘Bachelor of Commerce’ (B.Com) graduate after he was arrested for the second time by Delhi Police for allegedly creating a fake ‘Amazon’ website.
The accused, Rohit, was also arrested earlier in June for creating a fake Government website in the name of “free laptop” and “free solar panel”. The accused, Rohit, who hails from Rajasthan, was preparing to be aspiring Charted Accountant (CA).
According to Anyesh Roy, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), CyPAD, a complaint from Amazon Seller Services Private Limited that someone had created and hosted a website by the domain name http://amazon-big.billions-day-sales.in to misguide people and dupe general public by using Amazon’s brand name and by developing a website which appeared similar to Amazon’s Website.
“Subsequently, CyPAD registered a criminal case under applicable sections of IT Act and investigation was taken up. During investigation it was revealed that Rohit has created this website and he is the same person who was earlier arrested by CyPAD in June, 2019 itself for creating and running a fake Government website in the name of “free laptop” and “free solar panels”,” said the DCP.
“Rohit was arrested and during interrogation, the accused disclosed that he has good knowledge of computers, website designing, mobile phones and applications. He started running a blog on the topic of mobile phones and applications in 2016 which soon became very popular.
He decided to try and earn some money using this blog and signed up with Google Adsense,” said the DCP.
Adsense is a program that allows bloggers and website owners to make money by displaying advertisements channeled through Google. There are two ways to make money from Adsense, Impressions (based on the number of page views) and Clicks (on the Ads). Adsense publishers receive 68 percent of the click cost and Google takes 32 percent as commission.
“Within a couple of years the accused managed to make around Rs. 6-7 lakhs just by blogging on mobile phones and applications. However, he figured out that he could draw a lot of internet traffic using the brand name of Amazon and “Big Billion Day Sales” following which he created a website which looked very similar to the original Amazon website,” said the DCP.
“Police have also recovered relevant devices used in the commission of the crime. Efforts are being made to identify the involvement of others in the scam,” the DCP added.