Five Nigerians among seven held for online fraud in Haryana

With the arrest of seven accused, including five Nigerian nationals, Haryana police have busted a gang of cheats involved in online frauds in Faridabad district. They used to cheat people through Facebook promising expensive gifts.

Chandigarh: Haryana Police on Saturday claimed to have nabbed seven people, including five Nigerian nationals, for their alleged role in online frauds in Faridabad district.

An official spokesperson of Haryana Police said these fraudsters used to befriend people by creating Facebook profiles in the name of a foreigner girl.

Then they used to lure people by offering expensive imported gifts like gold jewellery, mobile phones, police said.

They used to convince people that the gift parcels coming from abroad need clearances from custom, excise and other taxes. For this, they used to ask victims to deposit a certain amount to a particular bank account, they said.

After receiving a complaint of online fraud in which a victim was allegedly cheated of Rs 35,500 on July 23, a police team was constituted to arrest the fraudsters.

Working on the tech-based intelligence and other inputs, police arrested seven accused, including five Nigerian nationals, they said.

The accused were identified as Williams Michael, Promise Ebere Okoli, Halimat Mohammed, Okeke Nnabugo, Kenechukwu Okonta, all five Nigerian nationals and Anurag and Nishant of Ballabhgarh.

Police recovered two passports of different countries from Michael and Okoli. All five Nigerian nationals were living together in a house in Faridabad.

Both the accused, Anurag and Nishant, had provided bank account numbers to the Nigerians for getting money, police said.

All were produced before a court, which remanded them to four-day police custody for intensive interrogation.

PTI