The gang used fake profiles on platforms like Instagram to catch their targets. (Representational)
Seven foreigners staying in Delhi and a local associate have been arrested for allegedly duping over 600 women in India of lakhs of rupees after befriending them on social media using fake identities, the Noida Police said on Wednesday.
The gang of cyber thugs would dupe the women after befriending them through Instagram and Facebook in disguise of merchant navy officers, Additional DCP (Noida) Shakti Avasthy said. The arrest has been made by a joint team of Sector 20 police station and the local IT Cell, he said.
Those arrested include six men and a woman from different African countries like Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast, while their Indian associate is a woman from Sikkim, Mr Avasthy told reporters.
He said the gang members, some of whom were staying in India without valid documents, befriended women through social media using fake identities.
"They posed as merchant Navy officers and chatted with the target women. After befriending them, the suspect would inform them that they have sent some expensive gift like jewellery, footwear or ring, for them but it has got stuck with the customs department," Avasthy said.
"Later, they would get a call from a woman who identified herself as a customs department representative. She would then seek money on pretext of some fees to release their gift which has come from abroad," the officer said.
Once any woman had made the payment to them, these cheats would go untraceable before the victim could realise the fraud, he said.
"The gang would usually take Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 from a target, as much as they could negotiate. However, the woman, on whose complaint, the FIR was lodged, has been duped of around Rs 2.50 lakh," he added.
ACP (Noida -1) Rajneesh Verma said the thugs were based in Delhi and they used fake profiles on social media platforms like Instagram to catch their targets.
"They downloaded pictures of merchant Navy officers from internet and used them to created a fake profile. They chose pictures of good looking people on their profile through which they interacted with the victims," Mr Verma said. According to the police, 31 mobile phones have been seized from the possession of the gang and it has come to light they engaged 600 to 700 women for fraud in similar manner.
Those arrested have been identified by the police as Calvin Okafor Guise, Uchenna Egbu, Ixa Sagir, Oyoma Lisa Domenik (all four from Nigeria); Daniel John, Jonas Dekka (both from Ghana), and Hibib Fofana (Ivory Coast).
The Indian woman who was allegedly part of the gang has been identified as Radhika Chhetri, who hails from Gangtok in Sikkim, the police added.
Chhetri posed as a Customs department representative as she could speak Hindi and helped the gang dupe several people, the police noted.
An FIR has been lodged under relevant provisions of the law and further proceedings are being carried out, the police added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)