Chennai: Had Rohith thought that he couldn’t afford to miss a critical moment to bail out a UK businesswoman whose traveller bonds were “confiscated” by Customs officials, his conviction would have gone wrong, besides leaving a hole in his pocket.
Cybercriminals from Delhi and Mumbai, in conjunction with African nationals living in India and UK, are reportedly running this improvised version of the lottery and inheritance scams, initiated through emails and social networking sites.
In Rohith’s case, his advocate friend enlightened Rohith that there was no restriction by the Customs Department on the import of foreign exchange and that it requires only to be declared in the prescribed forms.
It all began with a phoney UK citizen claiming to be Mary Henderson establishing random contact with Rohith through a social networking site. “Mary” expressed her desire to purchase medical instruments from India, especially from companies based in Chennai, and Rohith offered his help. In return, she promised to count him as her business partner and split the profit with him.
On April 17, 2016, Mary claimed to have arrived in Mumbai airport despite Rohith insisting she take a direct flight to Chennai from Heathrow, London. Upon landing, there was bad news, or so ut was made out as Mary said her travellers cheques worth Rs 2.5 crore had been flagged by the Customs officials and that she was having a problem in reclaiming them.
A worked-up Rohith thought that there should be some way to redeem them and she played her cards well saying the Customs official was willing to bargain, not with her but with her contact in India. She shared with Rohith the official’s contact number who then negotiated a price to let the traveller cheques pass Customs.
Rohith, who initially overlooked the poor English of the Customs official, realised only later that he was being taken for a ride after his friend had a word with the Customs official about on what grounds the foreign exchange was being confiscated. The dialogue froze then and there and the mobile numbers of the so-called official and Mary did not elicit any response to calls after that.
A senior police official asserted that the gang could have learnt that Rohith was not going to pay the money they expected and could have abandoned working the scam further with him. Lucky Rohith might have got away from the new trap being laid for the gullible with Whatsapp as they did with the lottery and the inheritance scams on mobile SMS.
