The two Nigerians were arrested for trying to blackmail two Indian women
The police in India has arrested two Nigerian men - Salestine
Baneme, 32, and Lona Thomas, 32 - in the Indian city of Ahmedabad by
officials.
The two residing are residents of Malavianagar of New Delhi and
were arrested for blackmailing two women registered on a matrimonial
website to pay them a huge sum of money.
According to reports, the two men had threatened to circulate the
personal pictures of the two women if they refused to pay a certain
amount of money.
”We posed as salesmen from a telecom company and moved in
Malvianagar on the pretext of improving the signal strength of the
service provider,” said a crime branch official.
Explaining how the two operated, Joint commissioner of police,
crime branch, J K Bhatt revealed that a working woman, registered on a
matrimonial site, got a friend request from Salestine Baneme, who had
created a fake profile by the name of Raju Williams on the same site.
The woman, Kavita, accepted his friend request and then the two
started chatting on various social media platforms. While chatting, the
accused sent a marriage proposal to Kavita which she readily accepted.
“The accused told her that he was working as an engineer in
Manchester in the UK and was to go on a three-week trip to Canada. He
was to come to India from Canada,” said Bhatt.
Meanwhile, the accused asked Kavita to send her personal pictures to him.
“Kavita refused first, but as the accused convinced her that he was her
future husband, she agreed and sent him her two pictures,” added Bhatt.
The suspects were said to have created 1,900,000 email IDs on which
they used to communicate with their targets. Not only that, they had
about 40 accounts in various banks across the country in which they used
to lure their victims to deposit money. The crime branch officials said
most of the email IDs were created through automation mail ID
generation.
“The fraudsters used to abandon a mail ID once they targeted
their victims and start using the other ones. According to our research,
the gang has cheated or attempted to cheat about 1,000 victims in
Gujarat alone,” said a crime branch official.
The fraudsters had created such mail IDs that resembled government
mail IDs so that the victims easily got convinced and fell into their
net.
“The gang used various modus operandi like lottery, charity deposits and lucky number gift money allotments to dupe people,” the official said.
The officials are gathering details of the 40 bank accounts that the suspects were using.
“The accounts were opened in different names and the account
holders used to get commission on the deposits made to their accounts.
Both the accused had come to India in 2011 on a business visa and since
then used to stay in Delhi,” said the official.
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