Nigerian among three held for online fraud

Prakasam police have achieved a breakthrough in a major cybercrime with the arrest of a Nigerian national and his accomplices from New Delhi.

Superintendent of Police Siddharth Kaushal told a media conference here on Tuesday that the Nigerian, Onyech Hyginus(43), created a fake page on social media and befriended one Achaiah from Prakasam district who used to hold prayer meetings in Baptistpalem in Podili.

Promising to give him 20% of USD 2.4 billion meant for construction of places of worship and hospitals in the district, he lured him to New Delhi. Then he made Achaiah believe that he was in trouble in the absence of necessary Customs and RBI clearances from the authorities for bringing in foreign exchange and got transferred online ₹14.67 lakh to his bank accounts on the pretext of making payments to the authorities. With passage of time, Achaiah realised that he had been cheated and lodged a complaint with the Podili police.

After registering a case under IPC Section 420 and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, a special team was formed to crack the case. It camped in Delhi for several days and achieved the breakthrough with the IT core team providing the back-end support.

Recovery initiated

Police seized five mobile phones, nine ATM cards, 22 cheque books issued by different banks and an identity card of the main accused who had come to India as a football coach in 2014. He had served two years’ simple imprisonment for overstaying in the country.

The SP said the process of recovery of the transferred amount and freezing of accounts of the accused with various banks had already been initiated.

The arrested, including Shahid Khan (32) and Md. Yaqoob (36) from Bareily in Uttar Pradesh, were brought here on Tuesday after obtaining transit remand from a court in New Delhi four days ago. “We are closely working with police in other States to investigate the online frauds,” the SP said.

The SP appealed to the public not to reveal the one time password (OTP) generated during online transactions to anyone, even if a person posed as a bank staffer. They should also not respond to emails and messages claiming that they had won lotteries and need to pay processing fee for getting the amount.