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With the arrest of two Nigerian nationals, CBI has busted
a gang involved in what is known as 'Black Dollar Scam' in
several European and American countries. The two Nigerians,
Vincent Nicholas Ikumalo and Oluwadamilare Disu alias Andre,
on production before a court, have been sent to judicial custody.
During the past, several instances of this kind of fraud have
been reported in India also. Initial investigation by CBI
has revealed the possible involvement of the two accused persons
in the 'Nigerian Letter Frauds' also. During the course of
investigation,CBI has found a number of Nigerian fraud letters
which have been recovered from the 'Outbox' of their e-mail
accounts. CBI suspects that the two were also cheating people
through these fraud letters.
According to CBI, a person posing himself as Vincent approached
the complainant through e-mail with a business proposal for
investment in the real estate in India. 'Vincent' and the
complainant decided to have a meeting. During the meeting,
one more Nigerian posing himself as 'Andre' was present. Both
the persons disclosed that they were in possession of a large
number of defaced Indian currency notes of Rs.1,000/- denomination.
They claimed that these defaced notes can be recovered by
applying certain chemicals and by using genuine currency notes.
They convinced the complainant by giving a live demonstration
of the process of recovering the defaced currency notes and
gave one such note to the complainant for verifying its genuineness.
After the demonstration, the duo told the complainant that
in case he was interested in making money, he should bring
Rs.50,000/- worth of Rs.1,000/- denomination currency notes.
Thereafter, they said, he would be given Rs.one lakh worth
of defaced currency along with the chemicals so that he can
recover the currency notes, whenever he wished.
Suspecting the intention of the accused persons, the complainant
approached the CBI and a trap was laid. During the process,
the accused persons again gave a demonstration in the presence
of independent witness and recovered two defaced currency
notes.
The modus operandi used by the accused persons was to approach
their victims using e-mail or through chat rooms on the pretext
of lucrative business opportunities. They used to gain the
confidence of the victim by telling him/her that they have
a huge quantity of Indian currency notes and they require
some help for recovering them. They used to give a demonstration
of recovery of genuine currency from the "defaced currency".
They used to apply a white chemical powder on one genuine
currency note and after keeping it between the two so called
defaced currency notes, they used to apply another chemical
on it. Thereafter, the said three currency notes were kept
in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes. After taking out from
the freezer, these notes were again treated with another chemical
and washed in hot water. In this manner, the accused persons
used to produce three different currency notes of Rs.1000/-
denomination.
During investigation, CBI found that the accused persons
used to keep two defaced genuine currency notes in a stack
of black paper strips and during demonstration were using
these two genuine defaced notes. After demonstration, they
used to take the genuine money brought by the target as their
share and cost of the chemicals and hand over ordinary black
paper strips and chemicals to the victim. Subsequent attempts
by the victim for recovery of genuine currency used to make
him realize the fraud committed on him.
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