Three Nigerians, who defrauded an engineering student of Rs. 1.7 lakh using often adopted modus operandi of luring individuals with false claims of winning huge sums in lotteries, landed behind the bars here on Tuesday.
The accused, Osrogiagbon Austine, 27, Ikeifun Moses, 25, and Maduforo Amaechi Frank, 25, were picked up from Bangalore and brought to city. A B.Tech. student from Miryalaguda town of Nalgonda district, B. Nagesh, was the victim in the latest case.
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Hailing from a poor family, the tribal student pursuing engineering programme in the city received an email nearly five months ago.
The mail congratulated him stating that he had won 5,00,000 British Pounds in Google Gmail lottery.
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“Unaware of the frauds being committed by Nigerians, Nagesh believed it was genuine and sent back a mail evincing interest to collect the prize money,” the Crime Investigation Department Additional Superintendent of Police, U. Rammohan, who supervised the investigation, said.
The fraudsters sent him a mail asking him to deposit money in specified bank accounts to claim the lottery prize.
Borrows money
Hoping to collect huge cash, the student borrowed money from different persons and went on depositing cash in different accounts as directed by the email senders. Eventually, he realised that he was taken for a ride and approached the Cyber Crime wing of the CID.
Building raided
The investigators traced the Nigerians to Bangalore after tracking the origin of emails. The trio was picked up after raiding a building.
The accused flew to India three months ago.
“That the fraudsters were operating from Bangalore suggests that they are slowly spreading their network to southern parts in addition to Mumbai and Delhi,” Mr. Rammohan said.
Articles seized
Three laptops, 14 mobile phones and six Internet data cards were seized from the arrested.