Hyderabad:
Four Nigerians were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Andhra Pradesh police from Mumbai on charges of duping a man from Guntur district of Rs 8.82 lakh in a fraudulent British online lottery racket case, police said on Saturday.
The complainant, K Lakshmi Narayana, had approached the Cyber Crime Police at the CID here stating that he received an email that said his email ID won prize amount of 163.1 million pounds in a lottery based in the UK and that their diplomat is coming to India to hand over the prize money, they said.
The accused asked the victim to send details regarding his address, phone number among others which he did and later he was asked to pay for customs, RBI clearance charges, currency conversion charges among others to claim the prize money. Narayana paid a sum of Rs 8.82 lakh into various bank accounts as told by the fraudsters, police said.
Narayana grew suspicious as he failed to get any money, following which he lodged a complaint in March this year.
During investigation, the call data of mobile numbers which were used by the fraudsters for contacting the complainant were analysed and based on their tower locations, a CID team left for Mumbai and identified the residences from where the calls were made.
After a search warrant issued from a court here, the CID yesterday raided the place in Juhu in Mumbai and recovered mobile phones, Internet data cards and about 60 SIM cards from four Nigerian nationals which were used for committing the offence, police said.
The CID team arrested the four accused identified as David Bid Ukatta, Ehiaguina Christian, John Uchechukwov Sebastine and Edeth Sunday and they are being brought to Hyderabad on transit warrant, police said.
The Cyber Crime Cell of the Crime Investigation Department of AP Police had last month arrested four Nigerians, including two women, from New Delhi for allegedly duping a teacher to the tune of Rs 45 lakh in a similar case, they added.