GHAZIABAD: Three Africans, including two women, were arrested on Thursday for allegedly running an online racket that duped clients by offering business opportunities overseas. Police said they had intimated respective embassies of the three persons, who had travelled to India on tourist visas.
The accused have been identified by police as Ivoh (35), from
Nigeria, and his two women accomplices, Jahara and Christina, who belong to
Tanzania. Police said the trio had been changing their addresses across NCR for the past two years.
The cyber cell of Ghaziabad police busted the network through surveillance following an FIR registered at Khoda police station. It had been alleged in the FIR, registered IPC sections 420 (fraud), 406 (criminal breach of trust), that some
African nationals had duped a person of money by offering him business opportunities in dealing with seeds. Police said the gang operated through a tested modus operandi by which they would make friends on Facebook and later entice them with fake trading deals.
“They had posed as representatives of a seed trading firm in London and promised heavy returns against certain varieties of seeds procured cheaply from farms in India. We have found at least 3,500 mobile numbers from their database which they had mapped out in the form of a chart. They would also pose as representatives of firms trading in branded wrist watches, mobile phones and beauty products. They would particularly target English-speaking people because they themselves had no knowledge of Hindi,” additional superintendent of police Ravi Kumar said.
“They would demand prospective clients to transfer cash into their accounts in lieu of procuring licence for trading. We are in talks with the embassies of their parent countries. They will be sent to a jail,” said Kumar.
