The racketeers allegedly lured people by sending SMSes of US Dollar win and tempted them to deposit different amounts of money in the bank accounts to get the winning amount. The racket came into police notice after a bank suspected the activities in an account in which amounts would rise and drop suddenly, according to the DIG Kesh Bahadur Shahi, Chief at CIB.[break]
The arrested have been identified as -- Ikechukwu John Dike, 22, a Nigerian national who had played A Division league from Jawalakhel Youth Club last year, and Ernest Kamara, 25, a football player from Sierra Leone. The police also detained Samjhana Pariyar, 27, from Sankhupati Chaur-5 of Kavre, for assisting them in depositing the cash in her account.
The police had rounded up about twelve people, including the three, released some of them after preliminary investigation. Some African people have been sent to Department of Immigration for over staying their visas.
According to DIG Shahi, they had been collecting the amount in the bank account of Pariyar in the pretext of legal fee, processing charge, country tax, insurance charges, NRS conversion charge and others. “They had created an account in the name of Pepsi Drink and Bottling Company and sent web SMSes to Nepali mobile users with congratulatory notes and the amount they have won. They requested them to fulfill legal procedures along with all personnel details via email.” They also gave fake bank account located abroad and fake id of legal advisors in order to convince the responders, he added.
DIG Shahi said that police had begun investigation after CEO of Nepal Investment Bank informed about a deposit made by one Rupesh of Bhaktapur in order to get the lottery amount. In the same account other responders had deposited Rs 85,000, euro 50, Rs 200,000 within a month.
The police has confiscated a laptop, four mobile sets, four foreign mobile SIM cards, different documents and about Rs 4,96,000 from their possession.
The police claimed that there are several other racketeers involved in such fraud but related stakeholders like bank are not much serious about the fraud. Many people are victims of such fraud but people are also unaware about them and get easily tempted and end up losing huge amount, DIG Shahi said.
The police said that the investigation is under way and the accused will be charged under banking fraud.
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