CHENNAI: A complaint from a private bank, alleging fraudulent online shopping transactions through its system, led to the arrest of three Nigerians by Central Crime Branch sleuths at Sembakkam on Tuesday.
“The Nigerians are being interrogated and full details of the fraud are likely to emerge in a day or two,” said Commissioner of Police J K Tripathy.�� The swift action came after Senthil Kumar, manager, Axis Bank, Fraud Control Unit, approached the crime branch police on Monday evening, alleging “fraudulent Internet transactions through Axis Bank for purchase of goods through online shopping.”
Registering a case under Sections 420 and 468 of the IPC and 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act, a special CCB team probing the case found that the purchases had been made from bigshoebazaar.com and yebhi.com, through stolen credit/debit card data belonging to bank customers residing in the US and the UK.
The fraudsters had ordered LED television units and about 30 pairs of shoes, among other goods, with an incomplete postal address in Sembakkam for delivery, additional deputy commissioner, CCB, Dr M Sudhakar told Express. “The bank approached us following a notification received from Visa and Mastercard Associations, stating that other banks had complained that credit card/debit data of their customers - foreign nationals - had been stolen for making online purchases,” he said. Probe revealed that the addressee was calling the dispatcher for early delivery and the location was identified with the help of the courier agency and enquiry.
On Tuesday morning, the special team, led by Sudhakar, swooped on the Sembakkam address and found several Africans staying there. After questioning them, the team zeroed in on three Nigerians and took them into custody.
Identifying them as Obasato Oladapo Olatunbosum (29) alias Richard, Dicson M Dickson (26), both from Lagos, and Abiodun O Oyekunla (30) of Ejigbo in Osun state, Sudhakar said the trio arrived in India on a student visa. Now, Dickson does not have a valid passport.
Interrogation revealed that the three men stayed in New Delhi and Bangalore before coming to Chennai, where they had been holed up in Sembakkam for the last three years. They claimed that they obtained the card details from associates in the US and UK and also downloaded them from certain websites. “While the three men received the goods, we are probing whether they made online orders or somebody else did,” another CCB official said. The CCB team seized a� Santro car, LED TVs, six mobile phones, three cameras, three watches, seven perfume bottles, three laptops and 32 pairs of shoes, purchased through online shopping.
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