Hyderabad: Man loses Rs 1.5cr to online frauds

Hyderabad: Nigerian fraudsters duped a bore-well technician from Hyderabad through Facebook pretending to be a female US soldier and looted Rs 1.5 crore from him. The ‘US soldier’ wanted to entrust 5.6 million dollars to the victim Sai Prasad. In the scam that went on for around a year, the Nigerians pretended to be RBI, customs and bank officials. They extracted money in the name of customs clearance charges other charges. Sai Prasad deposited lakhs for 14 months thinking that he would get the US dollars. Police arrested two Nigerians from their house in New Delhi. The fraudsters are Christ Williams alias Donald and Johnson Peace Obukokwo alias Marshal. Sai Prasad paid Rs 1.5 crore from his savings and by taking huge loans. He had worked in Gambia for five years. “In December 2015 Sai Prasad received a friend request from the fake FB profile of a US woman soldier in Iraq. She told him that she had deposited USD 5.6 million with Red Cross. She told him that she wanted to give the money to him,” said inspector K.V.M. Prasad.

The fraudsters later called Prasad pretending to be a man named Williams. Sai Prasad was told that Delhi customs had arrested Williams and he had to pay Rs 71,500. Sai Prasad deposited the cash. Finally, the crooks called Sai Prasad to Delhi and told him that they had got the box released. They introduced themselves as friends of the US soldier and showed him some dollars. They told him the dollars were masked as black paper, and a chemical had to be used for washing the currency and make it dollars. They then took Rs 13.6 lakh from him to buy the chemicals.