Personnel of the Cyber Crime Cell, Crime Branch CID, on Saturday, arrested two persons from Bangalore, who acted as middlemen and transferred money to Nigerian scam fraudsters, who cheated a Tiruchi-based businessman of Rs.26.55 lakh through phishing mails. A total of Rs.11 lakh has been recovered.
CBCID sources said the victim S. Salahudeen lodged a complaint in November 2009 after money was withdrawn from his online bank account through a series of phishing mails that looked like as if they were sent by the bank in which he had an account. Through 19 transactions between July 20 and August 13 in 2009, he lost a total of Rs.26.55 lakh.
A Cyber Crime Cell team investigating the case tracked the money to various bank accounts created by middlemen (known as money mules in Nigerian Scams) in different cities in India. These money mules, created a number of bank accounts to which the victim's money was transferred. They later withdrew the money and deposited it to different bank accounts in favour of the Nigerian scam fraudsters operating from overseas, sources said.
The police arrested C. Sridhar, an employee of an engineering firm in Porur, in January for facilitating the transfer of Rs.4 lakh. Two men from Bangalore identified as R.Suresh Kumar (28), an engineer from J. P. Nagar and S. Arun Kumar (23) from K. R. Puram were also arrested in connection with the case on Saturday. The CBCID is on the look out for five others.
