The Gautam Buddh Nagar police on Friday arrested two Nigerian and one Ghanaian national in Noida, India for allegedly cheating a retired Army Colonel of a large sum of money on the pretext of selling him nuts which could be resold at a high price, officials said.
Police said they recovered a large quantity of counterfeit foreign currency from them early on Friday while seizing fake company documents and passports, including one that had the photograph of Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai.
The police identified the arrested as Eke Uferemvukwe, Adwin Collines, and Ghanaian Okoloi Damion.
They have seized currency notes worth 3,000 USD along with counterfeit 13 lakh USD and counterfeit 10,500 UK pounds and various equipment and electronics items used in counterfeiting notes, based on the complaint lodged by the retired colonel from Greater Noida on December 7.
Abhishek Verma, DCP (Greater Noida), said: “At Beta-2 police station, a complaint was received by the cyber cell from a retired colonel, stating that he had received an e-mail from (a woman) who claimed to be selling kola nuts on behalf of a company.
“She gave him the name of a seller and told him to buy the products from her. Approximately Rs 1.81 crore was paid via many accounts.”
According to the FIR filed by the retired Colonel, he had been told he could buy sachets of Kola for 1,000 dollars and triple his investment.
After this, payments were extracted from him on multiple pretexts, ranging from seizures by the police to one of the buyers contracting Covid.
First published in Indian Express