Cyberfraud: India arrests three Nigerians

Three Nigerian men were arrested by Cybercrime police for duping a city-based woman of over Rs 2.62 lakh. Police said that the accused, identified as Lezhu John, Gibril Mohammed, and Egboola Ekena, were running a cyber racket and duped hundreds of people across the country.

All three were nabbed from Delhi. A woman, who is in her late 20s, filed a complaint at the Cybercrime police station a few months ago after she realised that she was being cheated. The complainant told police that she had come in contact with the accused while surfing her Instagram account.

The accused, who identified himself as Sohn Yunmin, claimed to be a chemical engineer from the US and said that he was working in a big energy firm in the UK. He told the woman that he was soon going to be working in Assam and befriended her.

Police said that the complainant became a very close friend of the accused and she even sent him a gift.In April this year, the accused told the woman that he needed to buy some machinery and his friend, who was supposed to pay for it, didn’t have money in his bank account. He asked her to transfer Rs 50,000 to him and she obliged.

After some days, the accused told her that he was coming to Assam as he got a job offer there and his parcel would soon land in India . After some days, she got a call from a woman called Niharika who asked for Rs 35,500 for the parcel that had US dollars. She transferred the amount but Niharika kept asking for more money by giving various reasons.

The complainant ended up transferring Rs 1.69 lakh but she soon realised that she was being duped. Police tracked down the accused on the basis of the bank account transactions.

“Investigations revealed that the accused used over 500 bank accounts to commit the fraud. Over 900 complaints have been filed across the country in connection with these bank accounts,” said M M Rajput, ACP (Cybercrime), Vadodara.

The accused trio had a lot of photographs of men and women in their mobile phones. They used these photos to make fake profiles on social media and dupe people.

Africa Update gathered that if convicted, each suspect face a minimum of three years imprisonment under the Information Technology Act (IT Act, 2000) and the Indian Penal Code.

According to Section 66D of the Indian IT Act, as cited on the website of India-based law firm, S.S. Rana & Co. on Sunday, “Punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resources; whoever, by means of any communication device or computer resource, cheats by personation shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term, which may extend to three years, and shall also be liable to a fine, which may extend to one lakh rupees.”