Four arrested for cheating Noida woman of ₹27 lakh on pretext of birthday gift

The suspects were identified as Abraham Likon, 35, Jutine Bly, 40, and Mortin (goes by first name), 35 -- natives of Nigeria; and Sylvestre, 38 -- a native of Ivory Coast in West Africa

Four foreign nationals were arrested on Monday for allegedly cheating a Noida resident of ₹27 lakh for nearly two months on the pretext of a birthday gift, police said.

The four suspects at the deputy commissioner of police (DCP) office in Noida Sector 6 on Monday. (Sunil Ghosh/HT)

The suspects were identified as Abraham Likon, 35, Jutine Bly, 40, and Mortin (goes by first name), 35 -- natives of Nigeria; and Sylvestre (goes by first name), 38 -- a native of Ivory Coast in West Africa.

One of the suspects disguised himself as a US Navy official and befriended the 70-year-old victim -- wife of a retired Army official, who is a resident of Noida Sector 28 -- on a social networking site on September 24 this year.

“According to her complaint, the suspects had befriended her through a fake account named ‘Captain Alex’ on Instagram. One of the suspects and the victim exchanged their cellphone numbers and soon started chatting on WhatsApp,” said Kumar Ranvijay Singh, additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP), Greater Noida.

The suspect took the woman in confidence, and asked her to share her birthday date with him -- which was in September itself. “The suspect told her that he would send her an expensive gift -- jewellery and 65,000 British pounds ( ₹65.11 lakh) -- to her as a belated birthday gift,” said Ankita Sharma, assistant commissioner of police (ACP), Noida.

Soon after this conversation, the woman started getting calls from unknown numbers and the callers identified themselves as Customs officials. “They demanded money from me to release the gift from the Customs department. I transferred nearly ₹27 lakh to different bank accounts, as provided by the suspects who posed as Customs officials, in eight transactions between September and November,” the woman said in her complaint.

However, the men kept asking for more money to release the gift. The victim smelled a foul play behind this and filed a complaint at the Sector 20 police station on November 19.

Police scanned details of bank accounts of the suspects and found that those were opened in New Delhi. “We traced Internet protocol (IP) address and cellphone numbers used by the suspects, and conducted a search in New Delhi’s Tilak Nagar and arrested the four suspects from there on Monday,” ADCP Singh said.

Police have seized 36 cellphones; four passports, laptops and Internet dongles; and ₹3.5 lakh from the possession of the suspects. The Noida police said that the suspects came to India in 2014 on medical visas, and their visas eventually expired. However, they did not return to West Africa and started living in India illegally.

The suspects are not cooperating with us in the investigation and it is not yet clear how many people they have cheated so far, said ADCP Singh. “A case was registered against the four suspects under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 420 (cheating) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) earlier this month. They were produced before a court and sent to judicial custody on Monday,” he said.

All the four suspects were brought to deputy commissioner of police (DCP) office in Noida Sector 6 during a press conference on Monday, where suspect Mortin said, “The charges levelled against us are not true.”