CHENNAI : The Cyber crime wing of Central Crime Branch police here have arrested a youth from Tirupur on charges of siphoning off money from 28 credit card holders across the country by setting up fake seller accounts with online auction site eBay.

Police say 25-year-old K. Mohanraj had set up a fake mobile phone seller account with the portal and had not delivered the phones to buyers. The manager of eBay received several complaints against the seller and had filed a complaint with the cyber police.

There are conflicting reports on how the online fraud happened: police say the accused used an online dating portal he ran to obtain the information of credit cards. He then posed as both `seller' and `buyer' on the portal; the complainant eBay, on the other hand, maintains that the 28 credit card users were registered buyers of their portal and logged into their site to place the orders. An eBay spokesperson from Mumbai said their customer protection cell had repaid the losses of the credit card holders.

The company registers sellers after getting details about their credit cards and mobile phones. "It is an unfortunate incident but this also shows that we are serious about putting the fraudsters behind bars."

A team of police personnel led by S.Balu, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Cyber Wing, went to Tirupur on Thursday to investigate the case.

They waited for Mohanraj who came to a courier agency to collect the payment made by eBay, where he was arrested.

The police confiscated a laptop and several mobile phone simcards.

In December last, three persons were arrested by Hyderabad cyber crime police on similar charges.

They used credit card details of customers to a petrol bunk to buy goods off eBay and later adopt the same `buyer' and `seller' technique to steal money.

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