A 28-year-old man from New Delhi was recently arrested for selling a rented car online and then stealing it back from the new owner on the same day. His scheme actually worked the first time, but he was apprehended when he got greedy and tried to pull it off a second time.

Mintoo Kumar, son of a retired Army captain and struggling entrepreneur, was looking for a way to make some money after his businesses failed, when inspiration struck. He rented a used Mahindra XUV 500 and soon also started looking for an identical one in New Delhi. Once he found it, the conman spent the next couple of months trying to get the registration details of the car and used them to forge a registration certificate for the rented vehicle. Once the paperwork was ready, he posted an ad for the car on an eCommerce website and waited for gullible buyers. He actually managed to sell the car pretty fast, but in order to complete his grand scheme he needed to steal it back again, fast. Using a GPS device, he managed to track down the rented vehicle to its new location, and since the owner hadn’t had time to change the locks, stole it using a duplicate key.

Reference photo

After having his car stolen in just seven hours, the new owner alerted the local police who were stunned when they ran the registration certificate data and found that it matched another Mahindra XUV that was owned by a Delhi resident. “The owner was not lying. He had bought the car through the site, an officer said. “It was stolen the same night. Initially we thought he was sold a stolen vehicle but later we suspected the seller may have stolen the same car from the new owner. We registered a case and began probe.”

Unfortunately for Mintoo, police were tipped off when he tried to sell the rented car again, and he was apprehended during a sting operation. He confessed to the whole thing, and admitted that the company he had rented the Mahindra XUV 500 knew nothing about his intentions. He was apparently going to return it eventually, after making enough money.

Mintoo Kumar

The Times of India reports that car theft is a growing problem in the Indian capital. 9,714 cars were stolen in the first three months of 2016, a big jump from the 6,724 thefts reported in the first quarter of last year. That’s a car stolen every 13 minutes, and statistics show that thieves are usually a lot more efficient than Mintoo Kumar, as only 4% of vehicles are ever recovered.

via NextShark