African footballer arrested by Surat police in kidney selling racket

SURAT: Cybercrime sleuths of city police arrested an African footballer in the nationwide kidney selling racket which has several people in dire need of money have been duped.
Paul Peter Camara (25), a native of Guinea in West Africa, was arrested from Bengaluru and he is the third foreign national among four caught in the racket. Earlier, two persons from Ivory Coast and Nigeria were arrested. All three accused were staying illegaly in India.
Camara is a footballer and played for different clubs in Bengaluru. He completed Bachelors in Business Administration (BBA) from his native country and came to India in 2018 on a visitor visa. His visa has expired and he was staying illegally in the country.
“He got upto Rs 3,000 per match and it was his main source of income when he came on visitor visa to India. But later he developed contacts with the accused and he started providing bank accounts to transfer the fraud money,” said Y A Gohil, assistant commissioner of police, cybercrime.
Police had earlier arrested Toty Dago Gregoire Kouduo Toti Augustin (33) of Ivory Coast and Tikendrajeet Dhirnchandra Bora (30), a native of Assam from Bengaluru. The third accused Gregory Yermadeh (32), a native of Nigeria was caught from Faridabad.
Toty developed websites that looked similar to leading hospitals in the country where the scamsters posted advertisements looking for kidney sellers.
The complaint was lodged on July 13 by Arbaz Rana, (25), a car reseller, who was duped between September to October 2020. Rana told police that there was no business since the past three years and he wanted to get his sister married for which he needed money. Due to the financial crisis, he decided to sell off his kidney and make quick money.
Investigation revealed the accused offered Rs 4 crore to Rs 7 crore for a kidney on fake websites of top hospitals like Manipal Hospital, Apollo, Max Super Speciality, Lilavati, Tata Memorial, Garden City, Fortis and others. They also created fake websites for forex trading and bitcoin investment.
Tory created fake websites offering jobs in airlines, agriculture, oil and gas, construction, dairy and courier delivery sectors in the UK, Canada and USA.
The accused used four e-mail IDs that look similar to IDs of RBI officials to convince victims that it is not fake.
Trusting one of these websites, Rana contacted a Whatsapp number given in on the site in September 2020. The woman on the other end introduced herself as Dr Shilpa Kumari of Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru. Police claimed that it was a fake identity given by the woman. Later, Rana was contacted by different individuals through phone and email.
The accused convinced Rana that he will get Rs two crore before surgery and the remaining amount will be paid after the operation. They demanded payment of various charges before the surgery, and believing them Rana paid money in multiple transactions through online payment.
In a short period, Rana paid Rs 14.78 lakh.