A seven-member Nigerian gang in Mumbai is on the radar of Greater Chennai Police for having cheated at least four businessmen in the city to the tune of several lakhs of rupees on the promise of offering business opportunities via social media platforms.

While the cybercrime sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) have arrested one of them in Mumbai and remanded him based on a city-based businessman’s complaint that he lost Rs 36 lakh through Facebook, a hunt has been launched for the other members of the gang.

The arrested has been identified as Fulgens Quadio alias Christopher Wilmer (27).

While he has been staying in Mumbai since 2018 posing as a businessman, he along with six others targeted small-time businessmen in the country and wooed them with business opportunities with an unbelievable profit margin.

“They identified such businessmen from IndiaMart and a few other websites where people post their profiles seeking business opportunities,” said inspector Vinothkumar, who arrested Christopher Wilmer after camping in Mumbai for about a week.

The CCB has received four similar complaints and suspects that the same gang could be behind all of it.

The inspector said the gang creates fake Facebook profiles and approaches the gullible victims and makes them deposit huge sums of money in certain bank accounts. It was in the same manner that KM Joseph of Kilpauk, who is into mattress business, got cheated by the gang last year.

According to police, Joseph received a message on Facebook from a profile named Elizabeth, who said she required 150 litres of folic oil for her pharmaceutical business and cancer treatment in the UK. She also offered that she can purchase the oil from a firm in Mumbai on the promise that he would get commission and provided the contact number of one Sunitha. While Joseph placed the order for the folic oil with Sunitha and paid the sum in 10 transactions, both Elizabeth and Sunitha were not reachable after the payment.

“Neither Sunitha nor Elizabeth is genuine. If Elizabeth knows Sunitha, why can’t she place the orders directly? People should not fall prey to such scams,” said an official of the CCB.