Seven People Duped A Vegetable Vendor

Don't Trust Anyone Whom You Met Online

In Mumbai a man who works as a vegetable vendor was allegedly duped of Rs 39.8 lakh by seven people. The seven accused, who duped the man on the pretext of opening a shopping mall were arrested from Delhi-NCR. Police said, one of the accused man is a Nigerian National. Police has identified the victim as Narayan Jadhav. In February 2020, Jadhav received a friend request on Facebook from a person named Mercy Grace. Jadhav and the woman started chatting in messenger, she told him that she temporarily lives in Dongri and also told him that she works with the US Army.

The Victim said that the accused "Grace" told him that she was currently posted in Afghanistan and wanted to open a mall in Mumbai. The woman said that she was sending one of her subordinates to Mumbai to shortlist a location for mall.

Few days later, Grace later told Jadhav that her subordinate was carrying $8 lakh with him and was caught at the airport with foreign currency. She influenced Jadhav, and told him that she had to pay Rs 39.8 lakh to the customer department to ensure that her associate was not arrested.

However, Grace convinced Jadhav to pay the amount and promised to repay him. Jadhav did not know the intentions of the accused, he transfer the money to the bank account provided by Grace.
According to The Indian Express report, after few days, Jadhav realised that he had been duped when the accused stopped taking his calls, and had no contact.Then the vegetable vendor approached the Dongri Police and the case was registered in March 2020.

During the investigation  the police came to know that Mercy Grace was a fake Identity used by a Nigerian named as James Amaobi Obiegbulam. The police launched a probe into the case and started scanning the bank account in which the money had been transferred. Then they traced James to Mukherjee Nagar in New Delhi after checking around 80 bank accounts.

After arresting James they concluded that he was the main leader of this group and the other six accused were arrested soon after James and they identified as Neeraj Ramesh Verma, Sabeer Sikander, Man Mohan Singh, Chandrapal Netram Sharma, Asif Shamsuddin Shaikh and Waseem Ahmed Khan. Further proceedings are underway.