Ever since Amazon entered India back in 2013, e-commerce has boomed at an exponential level in the country. It is now popular to the point where scammers and fraudsters have turned this digital service into their most prominent preying ground. Their latest victim is someone who spent almost 2 lakhs and received a product not even worth Rs 200.
Instead of Galaxy Z Fold 7, this man's box held a surprise
In a serious online scam, Bengaluru-based techie Mr. Premamananda fell prey to the oldest trick in the e-commerce book – bait and switch. On October 14, 2025, the 43-year-old resident decided to treat himself to the latest Galaxy Z Fold 7 via Amazon. It was supposed to get delivered on October 19, 2025, a day before the auspicious occasion of Diwali, and it did! However, it came with a twist.
Upon unboxing the package, instead of the expected Z Fold 7 phone, Mr. Premamananda was instead treated with a cheap floor tile, and that too, a broken one. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to film the entire unboxing and, in turn, recorded the fiasco as it unfolded.
This obviously wasn't what he expected, especially after paying a hefty sum of Rs 1,86,000. In the aftermath of the event, Mr Premamananda immediately reached out to Amazon. He also lodged a complaint through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and Kumaraswamy Layout Police Station in Karnataka.
Aside from the expected refund from Amazon, the resident was also successful in initiating an FIR under Section 66(d) of the IT Act (cheating by impersonation). At the time of writing, this is still an active investigation and authorities are trying to identify the source of origin of this scam.
We had a closer look at the shared video and found subtle evidences of tampering. If you look closely at the above-attached image, the Z Fold 7's main outer package shows a perforated seal. It doesn't appear the way it should fresh out of the factory. Looks like someone went through the effort to loosen the seal's glue, replace the item inside and repack the box.
As expected, this latest fraud has garnered a lot of online attention, raising serious security flaws within these e-commerce platforms. According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), in 2025 alone, Indians have lost almost Rs 7,000 crores in the first half of 2025 itself.
