4 Nigerian men arrested in India for duping hotel via bogus email scam

Eight men including four Nigerians were arrested on November 10th, for duping after sending a bogus e-mail to the account manager of a hotel in Greater Noida claiming to be their owner. 

The suspects on September 28th, wrote an email identifying as the Chairman of Hotel Crown Plaza, directing the account manager to deposit the money in 8 bank accounts. 

The manager transferred the money accordingly but later came to know that the Chairman had not sent any such email. Rakesh Kumar, director finance of the Hotel, then registered a case in Surajpur police station about the fraud. Dinesh Yadav, SP said that the case was transferred to the Centre for Cyber Crime Investigation, Noida.

"We found that the email ID of the chairman was spoofed by the criminals. The criminals had made a fake email ID with slight changes. The account manager could not notice the change and transferred the money," he said.

The police traced the IP address of the emails to Devli in New Delhi. A police team on Thursday morning conducted a raid and arrested Nigerian national identified as Reuben Sylvester. Based on his confession, the police conducted raids at three more locations and arrested three other Nigerian nationals named Sikiru Taiwo, Frances Obi and Ogwu Anthony Okwudili.

The police found five laptops, 28 mobile phones, 30 passbooks, 31 cheque books, 35 ATM cards, 20 pan cards, 21 voter identity cards, one driving licences, three aadhaar cards, eight data cards, and Rs 3 lakh cash from their possession.

The accused revealed that they used to send spoofing emails to corporate houses and get the money transferred in some bank accounts. Reuben Sylvester told police that they use bank accounts of some local people, who were part of their network for the transaction. 

The police conducted raids in Jasola, Madanpur Khadar and Prem Nagar in Delhi and arrested four Indian national identified as Nazish Ali, Naushad, Tanweer and Nazir Khan. A case of fraud has been registered against the accused and they were sent to jail.