NEW DELHI, Mar 10: With the arrest of 18 people including two Nigerian nationals, Delhi Police has claimed to have busted a major racket in which fraudulent mails offering jobs to gullible youths in several reputed companies were sent to dupe them of lakhs of rupees.
The gang especially targeted people living in southern part of the country as they were under the impression the victims will not come searching for them in Delhi or approach police.
Delhi Police had received around 300 complaints of this nature from across the country acting on which an FIR was registered at Crime Branch Police Station in August this year.
“The gang also perceived that as people from southern cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore were more tech-savvy and fluent in English, cheating them through email will be easier,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav.
Although such cases have been reported in the past as well, but in this case, what is interesting is that the kingpin of the gang operated from Nigeria and ran the entire gang with the help of two modules which had no clue about each other’s existence.
“There were two modules of this gang, the first part consisted of the two Nigerians, identified as Chinedu Cyprial (24) and Dubuisi Charles (28) and two other associates who are still absconding.
“They used to procure email IDs of gullible job seekers from various job search engines and sent them fake job offers in the name of reputed and well known companies,” said Yadav.
The duo procured activated SIM cards of various service providers from mobile shops on high rates. These were issued on fake documents.
They then used to create fake email IDs which looked like official email ids of the company and sent fraudulent offer letters to the victims quoting handsome salary packages to the tune of lakhs of rupees, police said.
“Once their victim was convinced. They asked them to deposit an ‘Interview Security Deposit’ in bank accounts specified by them. The amount varied from person to person. They also asked them to send payment slip through email.
“When the victim deposited money, they asked for more money on one pretext or the other,” said Yadav.
The other module consisted of Indian youths who had opened accounts in various banks using fraudulent documents.
These account numbers were given to the victims. Once the money was transferred, the money was instantly withdrawn by youths through ATM.
Three such “receivers” Anil Kumar (33), a resident of Delhi, Sujeet Kumar Dubey (32), a resident of Kolkata, and Jitender Kumar (31) of Haryana have been arrested so far.
“Both the modules didn’t know about each other so as to avoid detection. The entire work is coordinated by the kingpin sitting in Nigeria and the money flows to him. Members of both the modules got handsome commission for carrying out their work,” said Yadav.
Other than these five persons, the 11 other people who have been arrested in this case include various distributors and retailers who sold pre-activated SIM cards on Fake ids.
Kulwant Singh (30) has been arrested as he used to prepare fake identity cards for activation of these SIM cards, police said.
The investigation was handed over to Sub Inspector Vinay Tyagi who worked under the guidance of ACP Hoshiyar Singh and overall supervision of DCP Bhishan Singh
With the help of technical surveillance, the police managed to nab 16 accused in this connection from November 2013 to February 2014.
A charge sheet has also been filed in a local court against thirteen accused in this regard.
Police have recovered documents of 89 accounts opened in various banks on forged papers and more than 40 ATMs from the accused.
Besides this, a large number of pre-activated SIM cards and other gadgets such as mobile phones, laptops have also been recovered from the accused.
Efforts are on to nab the two absconding Nigerian nationals identified as Joe and Joseph Olouw and further investigations are on, police said. (PTI)
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