BHOPAL: An Arera Colony based factory owner/businessman and his son were allegedly duped to the tune of Rs 20 lakh by six fraudsters including two foreign nationals, who introduced themselves citizen of Ghana in West Africa on the pretext of procuring and supplying ‘Szanza oil’ to a Ghana-based commercial agriculture project.
The accused lured the victims in their net through social media platforms and told him that the oil was used in making Ebola virus vaccine and horse food supplement. They asked the victims to procure two gallons of the oil from a Tamil Nadu-based company at the rate of Rs 10 lakh per gallon. However, the oil supplied to the victims was common edible oil. The bank account used by the accused to take money from the victims was found to be registered in the name of a firm in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
SHO Habibganj B S Prajapati said that complainant Jaibhagwan Sangwan, a resident of E-3/Arera Colony, runs a fabrication industry in Govindpura. Police suspect the involvement of a Nigerian cyber fraud gang in the case. The victim’s son met one of the accused, an African national, who introduced himself as an employee of Ghana based commercial agriculture company, in Mumbai but he was unaware of the conspiracy then.
Habibganj police on Friday registered a case on charges of fraud, breach of trust and hatching criminal conspiracy against the six accused and launched a manhunt to nab them.
