Nigerian held in Delhi for fake lottery racket

New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) A 36-year-old Nigerian was arrested here for duping a woman of lakhs of rupees after claiming that she had won a lottery “organised” by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said police Sunday.

Franklin Idiumo, resident of Ben City in Nigeria, was arrested from north Delhi’s Rohini Friday for duping Deepali Laul of Rs.22 lakh by making her believe that she had won a lottery of Rs.1.75 crore, said Deputy Commissioner of Police B.S. Jaiswal.

Laul, a resident of Rohini, registered a complaint against the accused Jan 12, Jaiswal said.

“Laul received a text message on her phone that she had won a lottery of Rs.1.75 crore. She was lured to deposit some money to get the lottery prize money. She paid Rs.22.38 lakh through various instalments in different HDFC Bank accounts as asked by the fraudsters,” said a police officer.

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After a few days, she got suspicious and reported the matter to the bank which froze the account in which she deposited the money, police said.

Laul later got a phone call from one of the fraudsters who proposed to deliver her lottery prize money and she informed police.

As soon as Idiumo arrived at the complainant’s apartment in Rohini, he was taken into custody and an electronic safe seized, said the officer.

“The safe carried small packets of black papers concealed in white cotton,” said the officer.

The accused revealed that he cheated people by using a fake online lottery and created a fake website of Reserve Bank of India, police said.

He also admitted that he along with his aides cheated people by giving them black paper claiming that these were defaced US dollars which could be converted into currency notes by applying a chemical, police said.