Nigerian held on fraud charge

HYDERABAD: Achieving the first breakthrough in the series of increasing ‘Nigerian frauds’, the Hyderabad police on Thursday arrested Samuel Onyeike, a resident of Nigeria, in connection with a case reported two days ago. Police said it would be difficult to recover Rs. 1.26 lakh lost by Guruswamy, as the money had already been transferred to Nigeria by the arrested man and his accomplice in Delhi, the Hyderabad Detective Department DCP, R.S. Praveen Kumar, told reporters. An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which a person is persuaded to send money in the hope of realising a significantly larger amount. In Gurumurthy’s case, the fraudster rang up his wife in the second week of June stating that she had won 7.5 lakh pounds (Rs. 6 crore in Indian currency), as a surprise prize for Vodafone customers. and asked her to furnish their e-mail address for further communication. Assuring Gurumurthy and his wife that Rs. 6 crore can be theirs on completion of some formalities, he asked them to transfer some money to the specified bank accounts towards Indian Customs Airport Clearance fee and Yellow Tag and Non-Inspection Clearance Certificate. The complainant felt fishy about it when the fraudster sought Rs. 60,000 more to hand over the box and approached the police. A trap was laid and the self-styled diplomat, a Nigerian later identified as Onyeike, was caught at Nampally railway station. When the police opened the box, they found 11 bundles of black papers cut to the size of US dollars. It contained boric acid powder, some solution, a pair of gloves and a letter of instructions on how to transform the bundles into genuine currency notes using the chemicals.

(The Hindu, 19 June 2009)