Police have arrested two African nationals who had allegedly conned Rs 55 lakh in an elaborate manner from a relative of Tamil Nadu governor K Rosaiah.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) apprehended Mario Gomez Appaiah of Ghana and Fofou Jorge Marj of Namibia, both aged 35 in Bengaluru.
They had allegedly conned a 62-year-old businessman named Rajan Kumar, who is a relative of Tamil Nadu governor K Rosaiah, of Rs 55 lakh in total, reported Bangalore Mirror.
BM reported that the duo had spent Rs 5 lakh of the stolen amount. Rs 9 lakh found in their possession was retrieved and the rest is to be recovered as they had sent it to their homes.
CCB police said that the Mario and Fofou planned to con Rajan Kumar, alias Raju, who has jewellery businesses.
Rajan wanted to purchase crude gold and had advertised online in February. Acting as dealers, Mario and Fofou befriended Raju, his wife and family members. They also frequented his his houses in Bengaluru and Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh.
To win Raju’s confidence while they ‘arranged’ for the crude gold, the duo also gave him $5,000 saying they felt insecure about keeping so much cash with them in the hotel. CCB officials later found these currency notes to be colour-photocopies of the original dollars.
In the meanwhile. Raju had made arrangements for the money and showed them the packet in which he had kept the amount. The duo replaced the packet with a similar-looking packet which contained fake Indian currency.
Suspecting something was amiss, Raju contacted the Andhra Pradesh police. Eventually even the Bengaluru police was in on the investigation and Raju was asked to call the duo to Bengaluru and strike another deal with them.
They were arrested by the police from a hotel in the Majestic area of the city where Raju said he would meet them.
This is an aggregated report from Bangalore Mirror