A man from Sikkim was arrested for defrauding a man from Lucknow for Rs. 1.38 crore by posing as a Polish citizen and customs official online.
The accused called the victim over the phone and claimed to be a customs officer, according to the police.
“The victim, Naveen Singh Samuel, a resident of Madiaon Lucknow, filed a complaint with the cyber cell at the Madiaon police station in Lucknow. On Tuesday, the accused, Oathnail Rai, 27, a permanent resident of Sikkim who lives in the Munirka area of Delhi, was held by the Lucknow Cyber Cell police. The police filed an FIR under IPC 406 (criminal breach) and 420 (cheating), and they used online surveillance to apprehend the suspect, who has since been incarcerated.
According to a police press release, the incident took place on August 4, 2022. It says that Rai called the victim over the phone, introduced himself as a customs officer named John Spence, and told him that the victim had received gold, valuables, and a gift of one million pounds.
Fake custom officer then calls from an alternate number, identifying to be Dr. Felix Warsaw, a local of Poland, who had sent him the gift since he was overpowered by the casualty’s strict recordings on YouTube.
The victim was then required to pay non-inspection costs, taxes, anti-money laundering fees, and late fees, among other things, by the so-called “customer officer.” After that, the accused urged the victim to transfer the funds to other bank accounts, which the victim did. The man stopped responding after that. According to the press release, “he filed a police complaint with Madiaon police station, realizing that he had been duped.”
The arrested Sikkim man told the police during the interrogation that he had lived in Delhi for a few years and worked as a hotelier. There, he met a few foreigners and decided to con people with his friends through social media. In the past, he admitted to the police, “I used to contact and find people on social media and used to target them after proper research.”
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