4 persons including 3 foreigners held for duping retired official of more than Rs 18L

Kolkata: The Cyber Crime Police station of Bidhannagar Commissionerate has arrested four persons including three foreign nationals in connection with cheating a retired Central government employee, residing in Rajarhat Road under Baguiati police station area, to the tune of more than Rs 18 lakh.

The persons were arrested from Bengaluru on the basis of a complaint by one Bhaskar Ghosh that was lodged with Baguiati police station on May 19.

According to police sources, Ghosh had accepted the friend request of a lady with profile name of Anne Elizabeth on April 6. After few days, she gave a business proposal of supplying herbal seeds available in India to the US. She stated that these seeds are used for manufacturing life-saving medicines in the US.

Ghosh was then introduced to a lady who disclosed her name as Vinita Sharma and accordingly the former was convinced that his business will not only be of a noble cause but at the same time would fetch him good profit as well. During the entire interaction, he was quite convinced and he landed up paying Rs 18,32,500 in between end of April and middle of May 2018 on two different bank accounts as provided by Sharma. Once the payment was made, it was promised that a person would come and collect the herbal seed samples from his residence and pay him much more than what he has deposited. But no one even picked up the phone. Ghosh realised that he had been cheated.

The four persons arrested in this connection are Steve Gomes, originally hailing from Caranto City in Guinea, Kachi Aguguo, alias Kachi of Lagos Street, Nigeria, Jhonson Uhunamoure alias Jhon (34) of Siloco Road, Ghana and Sanchita Dey, alias Vinita Sharma (30) of KR Puram, Bangalore. The entire racket was based in Bangalore at the time of the operation.

The police has also seized a laptop, a passport, two passbooks and two ATM cards in connection with the bank accounts in which the money had been deposited.