Fraudulent activities in some online marketplaces

I was reading an article in a Bengali daily that reported about how a person named Ashiqur Rahman was caught by police after he bought an old mobile set from the online marketplace bikroy.com. It was actually a snatched set. But Ashiqur was unaware of this.

Prior to this, Ashiqur had been looking for an old set for sometime in the online marketplaces. Usually old and used sets have very low prices. He found this set at a low price and bought it. Ashiqur had used the mobile phone for 15 days and it ran very well. He must have been really surprised when the police found him one day and arrested him. Ishtiaque Emon, the original owner of the phone, had filed a general diary at Sher-E-Bangla Nagar Thana alleging that his Xiaomi Note 4 set had been snatched by criminals. Police traced the stolen phone to Ashiqur's location by tracking it through its IMEI number.

Such incidents are happening every now and then. Sometimes unscrupulous people and criminal gangs post 'for sale' advertisement on some of these e-commerce websites. The prices are so low for these stolen items that potential buyers jump at the idea of getting these phones at such low prices.

We need to be more cautious before buying any product from online marketplaces.

M A Islam

Dhanmondi, Dhaka