Three held by CB in cyber fraud case

Bhubaneswar: The Crime Branch (CB) of Odisha Police has arrested three persons, including two Nigerians, who were involved in investment fraud from New Delhi.

The arrested persons are Christoper Chizobam, Nnamdi Stanley Mbamalu, both Nigerian nationals and Arti Gautam from New Delhi. This organised gang of cyber criminals was operating in the guise of investment in saffron business promising high returns, the CB said in a statement on Saturday.

The accused Arti opened bank accounts in her own name and others, and shared these accounts with Christoper, who used those to transfer the fraudulently obtained money.

Christoper was involved in collection of mule accounts to facilitate the receipt of the stolen money while Nnamdi withdrew the cash from ATMs and handed it over to another Nigerian, it said.

The fraudsters trapped a person from Bhubaneswar luring him to be involved in a project for supplying saffron. The fraudster then introduced a supplier, who pretended as a regional manager at organics merchandise, a marketing agent for saffron farmers in India.

Initially, they supplied 10 kg of saffron for testing and then went up to 110 kg as per the fake purchase order. The victim paid a total of Rs 2.65 crore through multiple transactions to various Indian bank accounts, the Crime Branch police said. During the investigation, the Crime Branch found that this gang of cyber criminals has been involved in 94 cases covering 10 States across the nation.