As the trend of electric scooters rises the fraud in this market is rising as well. Last time it was the fake website fraud where the fraudsters targeted brands like Simple Energy and Ather Energy by creating doppelgangers of their websites and misleading the people who came to purchase the scooters. After scamming for a few weeks these fraudsters were caught by the legal authorities and the respective companies also took the right steps to spread awareness regarding such fraudsters.
But this time, these swindlers played a smart move to hoodwink the EV buyers and sell them a fake EV against the name of the branded EV. Here’s how the whole scam took place:
- The fraudster would set up a multiband E-Scooter franchise with popular scooters in their stores.
- People passing by would mistake it as an official franchise and will enter to buy an E-scooter.
- Acting like an authentic EV seller the fraudster will sell them a poor scooter at a discounted price.
Wallah! The scam has been done.
But a great mystery here is. How come the scammer provided them with the original RC, Number plate, and insurance? If all of that can be faked it raises a big question on the whole system.
EV companies whose scooters are Faked:
The mainstream EV companies like Ola Electric, Ather Energy, TVS Motors, etc. mostly sell their scooters online mode hence there are zero chances of forgery but there are a few other (small) EV brands that have done fairly good marketing and use offline channels to generate a decent amount of sales. Companies like Tunwal, Hero Electric, Okinawa, etc. have been targeted by fraudsters.
As such EV brands don’t focus on grabbing the premium customers but the low-ticket clients who mostly look for a traditional/offline store for booking a vehicle. Now as the scammers were wearing the cape of a legitimate EV seller any offline customer would go to them and buy a fake scooter.
Although the list of all EV companies is not out in the police report but here are the most possible vehicles that would have been targeted in this scam.
- Tunwal
- Fidato
- Hero Electric
- Okinawa
- Civitas
How this scam was caught?
After buying a fake scooter when the customers would go to the original company’s service center they simply denied from recognizing the scooter as all the internal parts were changed and are of low grade. When more of such case were started reported into the showroom the company took this issues seriously and traced back the history of those fake scooters and caught the origin of the fraud happening.
The original EV company reported the issues to the police and to there surprise when the police arrived the fraudster were pitching one of there fake scooters to a customers. After a brief investigation the legal authorities understood the matter and seized all the scooters have put a stay on all the operations.
Conclusion:
This case leaves us with a major question on the legitimacy of RC, Number plate, and insurance. If not even the legal documents can be trusted then it raises a strong doubt on the whole system. Also, the EV companies must create safety measures to take care of this problem and make sure no such thing is repeated.
