Nigerian held for black dollar fraud

A 36-year-old Nigerian national was arrested on Saturday for his alleged involvement in the black dollar scam.

Franklin Idiumo allegedly duped people of lakhs of rupees by making them believe that they had won a lottery organised by the Reserve Bank of India and then delivering packets of black paper instead of currency notes, police said.

The incident was reported after a woman told police that she was lured into depositing a sum of Rs 22 lakh to claim a lottery of Rs 1.75 crore.

"The complainant stated that she deposited Rs 22.38 lakh in instalments in different HDFC Bank accounts as requested by the fraudsters. However, she got suspicious and reported the matter to the bank, which froze the account in which she had deposited the money. A case was the registered and investigation taken up," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) B S Jaiswal said.

During investigation, the complainant told police that one of the accused had asked for her address, to deliver the prize money.

"A trap was laid and the accused arrested as soon as he arrived at the residence of the complainant in Rohini. The accused had an electronic safe with him, which contained small packets of black hard paper concealed in white cotton," the DCP said.

During investigation, it was found that the accused and his associates created a fake RBI website and sent text messages to random people stating that they had won a huge some of money.

Those who fell in their trap were asked to deposit money in various accounts.

The accused told the victims that they would give them a code in exchange of that money, to enable them to transfer the prize money into their accounts, police said.

"They used to fool people by giving them black paper and tell them that these were defaced US dollars which can be restored by applying a chemical," Jaiswal said.

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