Surat, Oct 29: The Cyber Crime Branch of Surat City Police has arrested five men described by police as key accused in an alleged pan-India fraud that targeted customers with fake weight-loss and skin treatment medicines, officials said on Thursday. The five arrested are Amit Gaurav, 31, a director of Curest Science & Wellness and Glozenic Skin Care; Pankaj, 30, a director of Curest Science & Wellness and Divya Antra Wellness LLP; Rupesh Kumar, 43, and Puneet Kumar, 43, both partners in Curest Science & Wellness; and Deepak Kumar, 24, a manager at the company. Police said the accused hail from Delhi, Haryana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
Source: IANS via hi INDiA
According to police, the alleged racket operated through four entities — Curest Science & Wellness, Vedic World, Divya Antra Wellness LLP and Glozenic Skin Care — which advertised products on social media with claims of effective weight loss and skin treatment. Customers were allegedly contacted on WhatsApp by individuals posing as doctors. In the complaint that triggered the investigation, a woman from Surat was allegedly approached by a man identifying himself as Dr Akash Malhotra, who asked her to transfer Rs 8,000 online through a QR code linked to Curest Science & Wellness for skin medicines. She instead received weight-loss medicines, and the accused allegedly extracted another Rs 9,000 from her for skin medicines while refusing to refund the first payment, police said.
Source: Nation Press
Police said that instead of shipping products through regular courier companies as promised, employees were allegedly flown or sent by train from Delhi to cities across India, posing as courier delivery workers, to hand over parcels and collect cash directly from customers. Investigators said a trap laid in Surat led to the apprehension of a delivery worker operating under the name Rahul Raj, and information from him led police to the company's call centre in Gurugram, Haryana, where a raid found around 160 people, including tele-callers, advisers and delivery staff, working at the facility.
Crores traced in bank and payment accounts
The financial trail described by police is substantial. A Curest Science & Wellness account with IDFC First Bank allegedly received Rs 6.99 crore between January 1 and June 29, 2026, while its Kotak Mahindra Bank account received Rs 6.58 crore between April 7, 2025 and June 29, 2026, and transactions worth Rs 8.30 crore were recorded through the company's Razorpay merchant account, according to police. In an earlier linked case, the same company allegedly cheated another Surat woman of Rs 1.77 crore. Police said four accused had been arrested in that earlier linked case, while the alleged masterminds had remained at large until now. A case has also been registered by the Cyber West police station in Gurugram, and a case was registered at the Surat Cyber Crime Police Station under Sections 316(5), 318(4), 319(2), 61(2) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and Section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act, 2008. All the allegations remain under investigation.
Source: IANS via hi INDiA