African racketeer stuns Surat cops with ‘Jay Mataji’ greeting

SURAT: It was a pleasant surprise for the men in khaki when 33-year-old accused of an online fraud racket Toty Dago Gregoire greeted them with folded hands and ‘Jai Mataji’. Cyber-crime sleuths of city police asked Toty how he mastered the Indian greeting and the man named a hardened criminal Lalu Jalim alias Amit Rajput who, he claimed, taught him the finer nuances of Indian tradition behind bars.
When the two hardened criminals met each other in the police lockup of city crime branch, gangster Jalim gave his African counterpart from Ivory Coast a few tips on Indian mannerisms. “He is a quick learner and has been greeting every individual with folded hands since the morning. We were surprised when he credited Jalim for teaching this,” said an official in cyber-crime police station.
But much to the cops’ annoyance, the cyber criminal has, however, remained evasive about the exact details of the ‘fake kidney racket’ and is also misleading the cops.
He is yet to name his associates who are involved in the racket, cops said.
Toty disclosed that his father was a successful electrical contractor in Abidjan but his business suffered massive blow due to change in power in Ivory Coast. He came to study Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA) in Bengaluru in 2007 and completed it in 2011. He returned home but after his father’s business started to go down, Toty returned to India.
But his visa expired in 2015. However, Toty continued to stay here and did not even go in his father’s funeral in 2019. Using his knowledge of computers, Toty became part of the fraud rackets.
Toty is an accused in a fraud of Rs 14.78 lakh with businessman Arbaz Rana, who wanted to sell his kidney to get his sister married off as he was reeling under financial crisis.
Toty issued advertisements on his fake hospital websites for people interested in selling their kidneys for a handsome sum.
He was arrested by cybercrime sleuths on July 17. He has been remanded to police custody for 14 days by a local court.