The sorry and tragic tale of the MBA who used apps to swindle jewellers

Young, smartly dressed and smooth talking, Subramaniam Iyer aroused no suspicion when he walked into Blue Stone Jewellers in Thane. He examined several pieces of jewellery before selecting a few and asked the manager, Abhijeet More, to prepare the bill. He would be paying through an e-wallet.

In less than a minute, Iyer showed More his cell phone’s screen, which showed that the payment had been successful. Iyer reached out to collect his jewellery but More hadn’t yet received payment confirmation and wanted Iyer to wait. More’s suspicion was aroused when Iyer seemed a little too anxious to leave. He signalled the security guards to secure the entrance and called the police. Police arrived and confirmed that no payment had been made before taking away Iyer for interrogation.

Iyer, his interrogation revealed, would make payments which would fail in the absence of the required balance. He would then take a screenshot of the failed payment, make another payment of one Rupee from one of his accounts to another. He would proceed to take a screenshot of the second payment and use a photo editing app to merge the two screenshots to make it appear that the first payment had been successful.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Vinay Kumar Rathod reveals that Iyer, an MBA graduate from Chhattisgarh, had no interest in doing a regular job. He instead looked for ways to make big bucks in a short time. His mother spent her pension to run the household but passed away a few years ago. His father finally kicked him out of the house. He then moved to Mumbai and started staying with some of his friends.

Reports of school and college students using photo editing apps to edit their marksheets caught his attention. He researched and found the perfect app that let him copy one part of a picture and superimpose it over another. He then started practising the merging process on his phone. His objective was to finish editing the photos in the time it took someone to make an online payment. As people, as a rule, do not peek into others’ phones while they are making online payments, he was certain, would give him the privacy to pull it off without arousing suspicion.

He has admitted to cheating 14 jewellers and 32 hotels and restaurants over the last one year all over India, including in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Bilaspur, Panjim, Pune, Mumbai, Surat, Bhopal, Indore and Hyderabad. He claims to have swindled Rs. 25 lakh to Rs. 30 lakh but it can be more.

“We have found four cases registered against Iyer in Mumbai and Andhra Pradesh. He also had two accomplices helping him sell the fraudulently obtained jewellery,” Rathod added.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)