New Delhi: Nigerian Arthur Okeke, 33, has been arrested for allegedly duping a retired CBI official last year of around Rs 36 lakh here after posing as a woman on social media, police said Tuesday.
The accused Okeke, a resident of Chander Vihar was nabbed from the Outer Ring Road, Monday. According to the police, the official complained that he became friends with the accused, who posed as a woman named Grace Dennis on Facebook.
She informed him that her mother was suffering from serious aliment and was admitted in a hospital in India, while she was stuck at the Mumbai airport due to some documentation, the police said.
Last August, the official got a phone call from an unknown number and the caller posed himself as a customs officer and asked him to submit some amount for clearance. He deposited Rs 35.80 lakh in nine different bank accounts, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Monika Bhardwaj.
The contact numbers of the accused were put on surveillance and bank account details were obtained. Through technical specification, the accused was identified as Okele, informed Bhardwaj.
Raids were conducted in Jaipur, Ajmer, Agra, Aligarh and many other places in this city, but Okeke could not be traced as he frequently changed his mobile phones and SIM cards. The accused was later nabbed from the Outer Ring Road, the DCP stated.
Okeke came to India in 2014. Later, he, along with his accomplices, allegedly started duping people on Facebook. They posed as a girl or woman living abroad, the officer said.
After befriending people on the Internet and, at times, over phone calls, they would dupe people by seeking money for payment of customs duty on some pretext, the officer said.
PTI