The Thalaghattapura police, India on Wednesday, April 12, arrested a 41-year-old Nigerian national, Andrew a.k.a. Eric Peters and his 52-year-old Indian girlfriend on the charge of duping a woman of Rs 50 lakh, with a fake business proposal through a website.

The police who took up the cases, approached the accused as a prospective client offering them huge sums of money and, trapped them. The two were arrested when they came to collect the money.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) S D Sharanappa said Andrew had come to India on a business visa and landed in Delhi. He has been in India for a long time now and his passport and visa documents are being scrutinized as to how he arrived here.

Andrew befriended Babli Parveen Hashmi (52) from Mumbai and the two started committing online frauds luring people, offering export business propositions for herbal medicines. They lured Vijaya, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur, offering her dealership for herbal medicines to cure snakebite and chronic diseases. The accused also offered to help her business in Western countries which could fetch her profits in billions.

Vijaya transferred Rs 50 lakh into their account online and soon she realised that she had fallen into their trap and had been duped. The duo subsequently went incommunicado. Based on Vijaya’s complaint, a team of police contacted the accused and offered to buy herbal medicines. They asked them to come and collect the cash as they could not transfer such a huge sum due to demonetisation.

The duo were nabbed by the police as soon as they landed in the city. Inquiries revealed that the duo had several bank accounts and had duped more than 100 people in several states and collected at least Rs 8 crore from them in a span of four years.

The police have recovered Rs 21 lakh from one of the bank accounts and will return it to Vijaya after obtaining permission from the court, a senior police officer said. Since the fraud has been committed across the country, the city police are considering handing over the case to the CID, City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said.