4 Nigerians held for fraud

Cybercrime officials have arrested four Nigerians and an Indian woman who allegedly duped a retired RCF officer of Rs 78 lakh by creating a fake website and posing as representatives of a seeds distributor.

The 61-year-old retired officer registered a police complaint saying that he had transferred lakhs of rupees to a different bank account of a group that contacted him through the Internet in the hope of a pharmaceutical dealership with a UK-based company, only to realise that he had fallen prey to a group of con artists.

The retired man wanted to start some business and was searching online for an idea when he chanced upon the link, www.sterlingbioscience.com, which stated seeds business for cancer patient in the UK.

Later, he sent a mail to them. No sooner, a woman by the name Alizabeth Phalake (29), pretended to be the owner of a Thane seeds company and offered a very good deal to the victim. She explained to the victim that he had to take seeds from their company and send them to the UK-based company for distribution among cancer patients. The victim jumped at the offer.

Police said, “Ms Phalake guaranteed him 60 per cent of the profit through these transactions. Lured by the profits, he agreed. Later, she asked him to deposit Rs 78 lakh in various bank accounts in order to get the seeds, after which, he would get a call from the person who would buy the seeds. He deposited all the money in several banks as per details given to him by the woman and got the seeds. Later however, no one called to buy those seeds. He even called on the numbers they had given him but no one picked up his calls.”

The police arrested all the accused from Navi Mumbai. They include Ms Phalake, Godwin Onyeaniforo 38, Okojie Williams (38), Imaniyal Pasakl (24) and Lansana Sise (33). Recently, a similar incident occurred in Vile Parle where the Vile Parle police arrested four alleged bluffmasters including two Nigerians, who duped a Gujarati businessman of Rs 20.5 lakh by posing as representatives of a medicine manufacturing company from England. The accused in this case were Rahudeep Danji Boricha (33) alias Nitin Agrawal, Shamgovind Haribhan Tripathi (32) alias Pandey, and Nigerian nationals Tony Abuna Mujordima (40) alias Micheal Dean, and Omon Osakuye (33) alias Manka Pergeorge.