Manipuri Girl Arrested with Nigerian Partner For Lottery Fraud

New Delhi, Mar 3 : Delhi Police on Thursday claimed to have smashed a gang allegedly involved in an e-mail lottery scam with the arrest of a Nigerian national and his Indian woman accomplice. Obaseki Prince (32), the Nigerian national, and Boni Sushila James (26) from Manipur, were arrested from outside IGI airport on

February 24 following a probe into a complaint filed by one Rakesh (21) that he was cheated of Rs 90,000 by making him believe that he had won a 7.5 lakh pound lottery.

Their victims belonged to various parts of India and are mostly well-to-do people. The scam has a distinct "Metro city signature" and the worst affected were from Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala.

The total transaction on the above mentioned accounts is more than Rs 35 lakh since March 2010 till date.

"Prince came to India in March 2008. Some of his Nigerian friends were already into lottery fraud and helped him launch his own. He met Boni through some friends and together they started cheating people," Ashok Chand, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), said.

Prince allegedly specialises in sending fake spoofed emails through e mail "nationwidebank@englandmail.com".

"The location of the sender is difficult to find in such spoofed e-mails. The lottery promises a windfall to the victim. Once hooked, the victim is asked to send information to an e-mail account generated by Prince," Chand said.

Prince used to ask the victims to keep the matter secret till the amount was received by them. He then tells the victim that releasing of the funds would require some small fee like cost of transfer fee, insurance, registration, RBI endorsement fees and other government clearances.

To make the offer seem authentic, calls were also made by some persons from England using telephone numbers +448713159061, +447010995814 and +447045755224.

The bank account numbers used by Prince belonged to persons known to him. Three of six accounts used by him belonged to his friend and co-accused Boni.

"Sometimes the victims were provided mobile phone number in India which were usually taken on fake identification documents," Chand said.

Prince allegedly used different softwares to facilitate his fraud. It included Advanced Mail Sender, EMail Pro and EMail Validator. These softwares were used to send one mail to millions of people across the globe and sort and segregate live email IDs from dead ones.

Boni completed her BA from Manipur University in 2006. After that she came to Delhi with a friend.

Initially, she lived in Dwarka and started working as a sales executive cum customer care executive for a private firm in Gurgaon and later joined another company where she met one of her classmates who introduced her to some Nigerian Nationals.