Two Nigerians among 3 held for duping professor of Rs 2.8L

Two Nigerians and a youth from Manipur were arrested in New Delhi for allegedly cheating a woman Assistant Professor from Telangana of Rs 2.82 lakh, police said today.
According to police, the accused falsely told the victim that an international seminar was going to be held in London and then asked her to pay money for visa, flight tickets, hotel accommodation, etc.
After the arrest of the accused in Delhi, Cyber Crime Police of Hyderabad brought the two Nigerians- Tommy Mack, a student and M Mezre Okafor, who is into cloth business, besides Henkhochon Haokip from Manipur, a BSc student, from Delhi on transit warrant, they said.

"Tommy and Okafor, who are the brain behind this crime, sent e-mails to all the agriculture universities in India as if it was sent by officials of the Third International Conference on Water Resources Energy and Climate Changes, UK requesting the interested candidates to participate in the seminar," Additional Commissioner of Police (Crimes and SIT) Swathi Lakra said.
"Some of the universities circulated the e-mail copies to their staff and students believing the mail as an official communication from the UK. One woman Assistant Professor who is working at Regional Agricultural Research Station in Jagtial town of Karimnagar district Telangana showed interest to attend it and according to the schedule of the conference, she submitted her paper," the Additional CP said.

The fraudsters then asked her to deposit money towards hotel tariff for stay in London, mandatory refund towards security deposit. They also asked her to deposit money for her one-way air fair, health insurance, paper publication and presentation and for emergency visa.

Accordingly, the victim deposited Rs 2.82 lakh in the bank accounts provided by the accused, police said, adding that even after paying amounts for various expenditures, she did not receive her air tickets or confirmation regarding participation in the conference.
Later, the fraudsters also sent her an e-mail pressurising her to convert her ticket to class-1 and for that they demanded to pay Rs 96,000, but the victim refused to pay that amount and got suspicious, following which she lodged a complaint with Cyber Police here.

After arresting the accused in the national capital, police found that the messages and e-mail IDs regarding this crime were there in the laptops seized from their possession.
Police are carrying out investigation to know the total number of victims.