A Salt Lake resident has allegedly been duped out of more than Rs 40,000 with the promise of a lucrative rent for letting out his shop for the installation of anATM.
Two men have been arrested for the alleged fraud. Raju Das, 35, a resident of Jagachha in Howrah, and Kaushal Shaw, 29, from Tiljala,were picked up early on Wednesday following a complaint lodged by Biswabrata Samanta with Bidhannagar South police station a fortnight ago.
A senior officer at the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate said Samanta had come across an advertisement offering a handsome rent and a big advance for running ATM kiosks in houses or shops.
“The advertisement was carefully drafted. It said the space needed was 70-80sq ft. Most ATMs are housed in rooms of that size. Theadvertisement contained contact numbers and a bank account number,” the officer said.
Samanta, who has ashop, called up one of the numbers. The person who answered the call said he would get Rs 30,000-40,000 a month as rent, plus a handsome advance and a securitydeposit, if he allowed the setting up of an ATM at hisshop.
“Two men visited his shop to ‘inspect and measure it’,” the officer said.
“When Samanta agreed to let out the space for installing the ATM, he was told to pay a processing fee and deposit the money in the account whose number was mentioned in the advertisement. He ended up transferring Rs 40,000 as the ‘processing fee’,” the officer said.
The ATM was never set up and after a few days the persons who were communicating with him stopped taking his calls, the officer said.