The scammers changed the security passcodes on a lost phone to gain access to the wallet.
Two men were arrested for allegedly withdrawing over Rs 50,000 from the account of a person through the e-wallet application PhonePe in north Delhi's Burari area, police said on Friday.
The accused have been identified as Sanjay, 40, a resident of Mukundpur, and Rahul Dass, 24, a resident of Burari, they said.
On November 3, one Sandeep Sharma had filed a complaint about the loss of his mobile phone.
On November 5 when he bought a new phone and activated the SIM card, he saw that his PhonePe wallet was active and an amount of Rs 52,860 was withdrawn by an unidentified person, following which he filed a complaint at the Burari police station, a senior police officer said.
During the investigation, the police obtained records from the e-wallet application and identified the beneficiary. Thereafter, Sanjay and Dass were arrested on November 6 from Burari, the officer said.
According to the police, Rahul had found the lost phone of the victim. Being tech-savvy, he unlocked the phone, reset all security codes for the e-wallet app and transferred money to pan shop owner Sanjay in six to seven transactions, the police said.
The pan shop owner kept a part of the money with himself and handed over the remaining in cash to Dass, they said.
The police said the accused filed a report late as he thought that the phone was misplaced and he would find it.
The police recovered the mobile phone of the victim and a new device worth Rs 20,000 from the possession of Dass, they added.