Deliveryman held for alleged phone theft
The suspect is seen picking up phones at the delivery station where he worked.
A deliveryman has been caught for allegedly defrauding a client and stealing 16 mobile phones from the latter, Shanghai police said on Wednesday.
The client, a man surnamed Shen, reported the case to the police in Xuhui District last month.
Shen claimed that a parcel courier, surnamed Yin, was entrusted with 16 mobile phones which were ordered by a customer in Shanghai through his company’s website in December last year, but the company never got the payment from the customer, and Yin allegedly said the parcel of phones was lost.
The phones were worth 210,000 yuan (US$30,000) and were supposed to be paid for after reaching the customer, police said.
Shen sought help from police after Yin resigned and the delivery company refused to cover his losses.
Through their investigation, police found that the account which placed the order for the phones had been out of use for a very long time, and the original user of the account was not living in Shanghai.
Moreover, the name, the phone number and the address in Shanghai of the client ordering the phones were all fake, police said.
The deliveryman, Yin, who handled the parcel was soon identified as a major suspect and he was later apprehended in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, earlier this month.
Yin has allegedly confessed that he purchased the abandoned account to place the order and fabricated an address within his delivery area in order to take possession of the phones, police say.
Yin sold the phones to a dealership, according to police.
The suspect is seen allegedly selling stolen phones to a dealership, as caught on surveillance camera.
