Ordered, picked up & cancelled: How e-comm agents stole jewellery

New Delhi: Two e-commerce delivery agents, along with two associates, allegedly stole high-value jewellery by using the company’s pickup and delivery system pipeline to their advantage. Police have arrested the four men and seized jewellery worth Rs 6.5 lakh.

The racket came to light after a logistics partner engaged in the collection and delivery tracking, found irregularities during an audit at its warehouse at Sanjay Colony in Okhla Phase-II. Several high-value jewellery shipments had reached the warehouse but the boxes were empty and had been tampered with.

The company went to the police. A case was registered at Okhla Industrial Area police station and a team under ACP Anil Sharma was formed.

The investigators identified pick-up staff Arpit Kashyap and Akash Rathore, tempo driver Mohit Kumar and Anmol Poddar, who was the receiver of the stolen goods.

Police said the accused exploited their access to the vendor portal and parcel movement system. They created orders for jewellery in other people’s names. DCP (south east) Hemant Tiwari said: “The two pickup staff and the driver manipulated jewellery pickup orders.” They collected the parcels “from various vendors and then cancelled the orders before the parcels reached the warehouse”, the officer said. They opened the parcels while in transit, removed the jewellery and carefully repacked the boxes to make these appear untampered, before depositing these at the warehouse, DCP Tiwari added.

This created an impression that the deliveries were legitimate but had been cancelled by customers. At the same time, the articles had also been removed.

The stolen jewellery was sold at discounted rates to Poddar who, police said, purchased without generating any bills.

The investigators tracked the vendor portal’s tasks, order IDs, parcel movement logs, route sheets and phone records. The analysis revealed a recurring pattern in which certain high-value orders were generated, collected and cancelled. These later turned out to be empty boxes in the warehouse. Police said the trail established the conspiracy and helped the investigators connect multiple suspicious transactions and parcel movements.

Following the arrests, police also seized the jewellery. They said the seized items were being matched with vendor invoices and shipment records.

Further investigation is on to ascertain whether more shipments were targeted and if more people were involved in the network.