Six Nigerian nationals held for running a nation-wide phishing scam.
If you wondered where you are receiving fradulent emails about winning millions of dollars and property in the United Kingdom from, the city’s crime branch has the answers.
These SMSes and emails were not generated from foreign soil, but by a group of Nigerians holed up in rented flats in Goregaon (E).
The city crime branch sleuths on Saturday arrested six Nigerian nationals for their alleged involvement in phishing scams and suspects that they would have cheated several people to the tune of lakhs of rupees.
The arrested have been identified as Mira Road resident Yoha Jihan, 33, Colaba resident Tony Eveka, 34, New Delhi resident Aeike Inahuro, 25; and Amadin Jeffery, 31, Jarvis Lavani, 34 and Theofelis Ibemudia, 32, all three residents of Aarey Colony.
Joint commissioner of police, crime Himanshu Roy said the Ghatkopar unit of crime branch after a tip-off raided flat numbers 408, 615 and 702 in the Garden View building, Mayur Nagar in Aarey Colony on Saturday and busted the phishers.
“In all, 14 laptops, 15 data-cards, seven passports, 23 mobile phones, printers, chargers and cash amounting to Rs40,000 were seized from the gang, which have been staying in the country since past many months. We are scrutinising the leave-and-license agreements of the flats they had rented,” said additional commissioner Deven Bharti.
Explaining their modus-operandi, Roy said, they were using two different ways to con their victims. “They would either send SMSes and emails informing victims about being selected in some lucky draw or the name the victims as beneficiaries of inherited property worth crores, mostly of a rich person in the UK or Libya. They would ask the victims for their email address for further communication,” added Bharti.
“Once in possession of the email address, they would email the victims and try to convince the victims. They had also prepared bogus certificates of the firms who had allegedly carried out lucky draws and announced the bogus prize money cheques. They would then email these bogus documents to the victim to gain their trust,” said deputy commissioner Nisar Tamboli.
The accused would then started demanding money from the victims, saying they would need to appoint a local lawyer to act on their behalf in the UK and release the prize money from the government there.
“They would then demand money on various pretexts like clearance from the revenue department in UK, RBI and Customs, take money from the victims and disappear,” added Tamboli.
“The accused also had bank accounts in the city and we suspect they have some local contacts too. We are in the process of scrutinising their laptop, mobile phones, data-cards and emails to ascertain about the victims, whose number may run into thousands. They have also got PAN cards and driving licenses issued from Mumbai,” said inspector Vinayak Vast.
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