A 38-year-old Nigerian woman, identified as Nawakoo Oluchi Chivoma has been arrested in India for allegedly duping a 21-year-old man from south Mumbai.

According to Indian Express newspaper, Oluchi reportedly posed as an executive of an international pharmaceutical firm.

According the police, they have so far identified over eight cases in which the accused is allegedly involved.

Police said the accused has been identified as Nawakoo Oluchi Chivoma, who would allegedly offer victims business deals for the procurement of herbal products and later swindle them.

The victim, Prakash Devasi, said in his complaint that Chivoma had messaged his father on November 6, 2019. She went by the name Mark Nana, and claimed an international company was looking for an exporter of a herbal product in India.

“The complainant was asked to buy the raw material from particular companies in Assam and Rajasthan. These companies were conduits of the accused and were part of the fraud,” said a police officer.

Chivoma then sent a representative to test the products that the complainant had purchased, promising to buy it at a higher price if the material passed “quality tests”.

“Devasi bought two litres of the product from a company at Rs 5 lakh. Later, an executive visited their office and said the quality tests were positive, offering to buy the product at double the previous rate. However, he said the company would need double the amount of the herbal product,” said the officer.

Later, the complainant approached another company in Rajasthan, which he was informed of by the accused, and made an advance payment of Rs 5.8 lakh for 10 litres of the product. However, he then encountered another victim who was duped using a similar modus operandi and approached VP Road police station to lodge a complaint. The police registered a case under the relevant sections of cheating and began searching for the suspects using call data records.

“As the number was switched off, we located her with the help of a courier service that had delivered the herbal products at the complainant’s address,” said the officer. Police nabbed Chivoma in Navi Mumbai when she met with a representative of the courier company to receive the herbal products. The accused was arrested on March 27 and produced in court the next day, following which she was remanded to police custody till March 3.

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