KASARGOD: Kasaragod police caught a Nigerian who allegedly duped a retired bank employee of Rs 42.2 lakh by luring him to become a global distributor for a non-existing herbal product, Anigra.
A team of five officers from Kasaragod picked up Anthony Oghenerobo Efidhere (45) from his two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru's Battarahalli under RK Puram police station limits. The police also impounded a travel bag which had a laptop, external hard disk, router, pen drive, four mobile phones, seven debit cards from different banks, three passports of three different persons, Aadhaar, PAN card, and driving licence. The bag also had a bundle of photocopies of $100 notes, said Kasaragod town station house officer P Ajith Kumar.
A court in Kasaragod has remanded him in custody.
His passport is with the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai. "We will have to find why FRRO is holding his passport," said inspector Ajith Kumar.
Investigating officers said the Nigerian has chosen not to cooperate with the investigation. "But we have found incriminating evidence against him in his mobile phone. He did not delete the WhatsApp chats with the victim," said an officer.
But the police were not too hopeful of getting the bank manager's money back. "We don't know where the money has gone," he said.
The Facebook Fraud
The retired bank manager in Vidyanagar was contacted on Facebook by a woman identifying herself as an official of Grotheid Pharmaceuticals in Amsterdam. She said there was a high demand for Anigra, a herbal product, in Europe and asked him to be a distributor for the product.
Anigra is a fake product, Grotheid exists only on Facebook and the person who contacted him was using a fake account.
The scammers made the retired bank official buy eight packets weighing 100g each for Rs 44,000 and got them tested in a "lab" in the UK.
After getting a positive report from the lab, the retired official bought 100 packets of Anigra for Rs 42 lakh. The fraudsters had introduced a farmer Anil from Vellore to the victim to supply the herbal product. "Of course, the lab and the farmer are all part of the story sold to the victim," said the officer.
The police found that the consignment was couriered to the retired bank manager from Bengaluru and not Vellore.
After the delivery, the official of Grotheid Pharmaceuticals contacted the victim again and asked him to deliver the package to the company's executive in Bengaluru.
As instructed, the retired official met the executive in a room in Hotel Royal Serenity at Bengaluru's Kalyan Nagar. The executive was Anthony Oghenerobo Efidhere, the Nigerian.
He took the 108 packets of Anigra and gave the retired bank official $500 "because anything more cannot be exchanged" for rupees for a person without an NRI account. Even a person with an NRI bank account can change only up to $7,000. "The Nigerian knew all the rules governing money exchange," the officer said.
Efidhere then gave him a box with 70 bundles of $100 notes and asked him not to open it till his agent arranges the cash in rupees. "The dollars were given as security," the Nigerian assured the retired bank official.
The Kasaragod man returned home with the box. All these things happened between June 9 and July 18.
After a week, when the money exchange agent did not contact him, the retiree contacted the police. When the police opened the box, it was full of photocopies of $100 bills.
How the fraudster was caught
After the complaint was filed, Town Police inspector Ajith Kumar sent five officers -- sub-inspector Madhusoodan P, assistant sub-inspector K V Joseph, senior civil police officers Bijosh Varghese K, and Anil K T -- to Bengaluru.
The team reviewed the footage from Royal Serenity Hotel and identified the Nigerian. "He used a fake ID to book a room," said an officer.
Meanwhile, the bank manager got one phone call from the fraudster asking him to buy another 100 packets so that they can speed up the process of converting the dollars with him to rupees.
Police found that the phone number was registered in the name of a migrant worker from Tripura. "These fraudsters pay Rs 5,000 to migrant workers in Delhi and Bengaluru for helping them get SIM cards. They will cook up another story for that," said an officer.
Once they have a phone number, they will contact another migrant worker to help them get a bank account using his documents. For bank accounts, they pay up to Rs 10,000, he said. "Their game starts once they link the bank account to the illegally procured phone number," the officer said.
They use these bank accounts and phone numbers only once.
The retired bank manager had transferred Rs 42 lakh to six bank accounts as directed by the "executive of Grotheid".
The fraudsters emptied the six bank accounts using Google Pay, a mobile payment app. Unlike internet banking, police take around one month to find the recipient of a payment app transfer because of the long procedure involved.
SI Madhusoodan's team waited for three days in Bengaluru before the fraudster activated the phone number which was used to contact the victim in Kasaragod. "It was on for three minutes but that was enough for us to locate him," said an officer.
His apartment was 500m away from a Nigerian pocket at Battarahalli. After observing Oghenerobo Efidhere for a few more hours, the officers barged into his house and immediately handcuffed him. "He is a hefty man. He has a gym in his house. We didn't want to take a risk," the officer said.
Within three minutes, the police team was on their way back to Kasaragod with Oghenerobo Efidhere and his travel bag.
His wife, a Kannadiga woman who works in a beauty parlour, had no idea about his activities. They married last month after three years of courtship. She is in Kasaragod to help secure his release.
Before the pandemic, Efidhere -- a computer science postgraduate -- was running a tee-shirt and mug printing shop in Bengaluru and had a colour copier. "He must have used those machines to take photocopies of dollars," said an officer.
Police said Oghenerobo Efidhere's team may comprise not more than two or three persons. Most of the persons he introduced to the retired bank employee on Facebook could be just him under fake IDs. "They don't call. They only chat through Facebook and rarely on WhatsApp," he said.
Even after getting Rs 42 lakh, the fraudsters kept engaging with the complainant. One of them is still in contact with the complainant.
Investigating officers said it could be their attempt to buy time to transfer the money out to a safe place. "If the money has been transferred to bank accounts outside India, our run ends," said the officer. And international agencies may not be interested in a Rs 42-lakh fraud.
Anatomy of Anigra scam
*Fraudsters pay Rs 5,000 to migrant workers to buy SIM cards in their names
*They pay Rs 10,000 to workers to open bank accounts and link the illegally procured phone numbers to the accounts
*Fraudsters use these bank accounts and phone numbers to scam only once
*The retired bank employee had transferred Rs 42 lakh to six bank accounts
*The fraudsters emptied the accounts using mobile payment apps, which make it harder to find the recipients