When a 30-year-old lodge supervisor from Chembur, who had been trying to transfer overseas, noticed an e mail from the “Hilton hotel in Canada” on January 15 providing him a job, he was elated.
He had been on the lookout for a job in a overseas lodge via varied portals, together with shine.com and linked.in. He was instantly despatched an appointment letter and requested to get in contact with “diplomat Mark Brown”.
Brown, in flip, requested him to pay visa price, programme price, employment authorisation and primary travelling allowance price and obtained him to deposit Rs 17.22 lakh in varied financial institution accounts. After realising that he had been duped since he didn’t hear again from the lodge, the person filed a criticism with the police.
Eventually, it turned out that 4 alleged fraudsters from Pune, who had been arrested by the cyber police on Monday, hatched the “Canada-based Hilton hotel” e mail and “diplomat Mark Brown” plan to dupe the complainant.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Milind Bharambe stated, “Of the four accused, three hail from Nigeria and one from Sierra Leone. On checking their computers, we found data of 27,000 people… they were probable fraud targets. The details were of people from 48 countries, including France, Philippines and Saudi Arabia, which hints that the accused were involved in conning citizens of other countries as well.”
He added that of the 27,000, the accused had established contacts with round 2,000 folks.
DCP (Cyber) Rashmi Karandikar stated that they’ve discovered 64 accounts in 12 nationalised banks situated in varied states, together with Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, which had been utilized by the accused to deposit the proceeds of crime.
The police suspect these had been mule accounts the place persons are paid a sure proportion by criminals to make use of their accounts to deposit cash from fraudulent actions.
“A total of Rs 2.5 crore were found in these accounts. We also found two accounts of a bank in Nigeria and Dubai. A total of Rs 10 crore had been sent to the Nigerian bank account,” Bharambe stated.
“We suspect that a major chunk of this money would have been proceeds of crime and have asked all the bank accounts to be frozen,” he added.
The police have discovered that whereas two of the accused had pupil visas, one had an expired visa. The fourth accused’s passport is but to be discovered.
Bharambe stated, “So many people fall prey to these scams every day. I would request people to not click on links sent from unknown numbers or email addresses. Also, no employer will directly offer an appointment letter and ask for money to be paid for the same.”
