Police have arrested two Nigerian nationals and one of their Indian accomplice for duping several people through fake “lottery”, and recovered Rs 4 lakh cash from them.
Efforts are on to arrest two more members of the gang, including another Nigerian, who have cheated people by telling them that they have won lotteries, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Jatin Narwal said.
Rs 4 lakh cash, 26 ATM cards, 25 PAN cards, 32 cheque books of different banks, five SIM cards and three mobile phones were recovered from the accused, he said.
The Nigerians — Nnaemaka Agbo (35), Kingsley (32) were arrested on July 15 and their accomplice identified as Waris Khan (22) was arrested on July 14 after a case was lodged at the Sadar Bazar police station on the complaint of Bhupender Singh, he added.
The complainant had alleged that he received an SMS on June 26 that he had won USD 5 lakh in a lottery after which he deposited Rs 95,000, demanded as various charges, in different bank accounts in the first week of July, the DCP said.
Singh said he developed suspicion when he was asked to deposit Rs 2,86,000 more following which he approached the police, Narwal said.
A police team was formed and the accused were tracked through surveillance and phone number tracking. Waris was arrested from Jamia Nagar and his interrogation led to the arrest of Agbo and Kingsley who lived in Khanpur, he said.
Waris is a native of Bareilly and had allegedly opened several accounts in the names of persons of his village.
The accused duped people by asking them to deposit money in bank account numbers provided by them to get the lottery amount purportedly won by them, Narwal said.
