Arrested gang members cheated several professionals on online classifieds marketplacesBusting an enormous racket, the city’s West division Chickpet police have arrested a gang of six Nigerians who – over the course of almost four years – allegedly cheated over a thousand victims including doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, and businessmen of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of selling them new cars cheap by advertising on national online classifieds such as Olx.in and Quikr.com.The main accused are Bolaji Lawal, 36, a native of Lagos, Nigeria; and his wife, Averil, 24, a Nigerian by birth who was raised in Sheshadri Nagar, Bengaluru. Their accomplices are Chika Okpala, 30; Okjie Colling, 28, Oja L, 30, and Christian Obinna, 31.Police said the gang would post ads on Quikr.com and Olx.in under a fake name claiming they had a vehicle in good condition to sell cheap. On June 20, a man named Shekhar approached the police stating he had fallen victim to such a fraud, and that he had contacted the number listed on the website since the ad claimed a new SUV was on sale cheap.The man who answered Shekar’s call told him he had ‘urgent business’ in Delhi and that the ‘brand new car’ had been kept in the parking lot of the international airport. He then gave the victim a number, claiming it belonged to a customs officer who would let him see the car for purchase.When Shekar called the number, Averil – who goes by the aliases Deepa, Jyothi, Lalitha, etc, and speaks fluent Kannada, Hindi, English, and Tamil – pretended to be a customs officer and asked Shekar to transfer an initial amount of Rs 35,000 as parking fees before he would be allowed to see the car. When the victim transferred the amount and called her, she then smooth-talked him into transferring Rs 25,000 twice into the account again, before she stopped answering his calls and switched her phone off.When the Chickpet police were informed of this, they decided to set a trap for the gang that the CID had also reportedly been tracking for over 3-4 months.Posing as a potential customer/victim, the cops began communicating with the accused through one of the numbers posted on an online ad, pretending to want to buy a car. Over the course of a week, police deposited Rs 10,000 into two different accounts while simultaneously tracking the tower locations of the accused’s’ mobile network and then zeroed in on their location to nab them.“We found that the accused used one SIM card and phone number to contact as many as two-three victims before disposing of the numbers. In this way, we learnt that they had acquired and used 4,000 SIM cards per year! Moreover, they would use illegal money laundering methods by employing ‘mules’ in order to avoid detection by paying off an innocent or poor person with a bank account to allow them to use the account as they pleased. Officials are in possession of the numbers of nearly 30 such fake bank accounts that they were using. The accused lived in a duplex apartment in Bengaluru rural and worked out of their home. They pretended to run a cloth business for a living, but had been conning people for nearly four years,” said Chickpet police inspector Vasanth Kumar.With the gang’s arrest, police also seized Rs 40,000 in cash, two Honda City cars that the accused used to move around in, various branded laptops, mobile phones, pen drives, memory cards, SIM cards and documents.It is found that Lawal is considered the ‘kingpin’ of Nigerians living in Bengaluru, and that any Nigerian who moved to the city would first contact him to find accommodation, a vehicle etc. and for other help. Moreover, Lawal is the prime accused in the assault and brutal murder of a Nigerian national named Joshua alias Samuel Abiodun Paul that occurred in Hennur police limits in 2014. The accused were found to have been living in the country with expired passports and visas, which they had forged by themselves.The Kodigehalli police from the city’s North East division have busted another racket whose accused followed the same modus operandi and cheated victims of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of selling vehicles on Olx.in; and have arrested one Nigerian and one local. The accused are Ehibhi Ehis, 27, from Nigeria; and Indrani alias Sadhana alias Dali alias Indu, 25, from Kaval Byrasandra, RT Nagar, who allegedly cheated one Srinivas Babu of Rs 95,000 on the pretext of selling him a brand new Honda City for Rs 3.5 lakh. Three others including one Nigerian and two locals are at large.