Another ‘gift fraud’ racket busted, 4 Nigerians among 5 held

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has busted another "gift fraud" gang that swindled money from people in the name of gift-giving on social media.

They detained four Nigerian citizens and a Bangladeshi woman from the Kafrul and Pallabi areas in the city on Thursday night and seized copies of screenshots of their conversations on social media – Facebook, WhatsApp, and Emo.

RAB seized: two expired passports, bank deposit books, cheque books, 12 mobile phones, a private jeep, and more than Tk3 lakh in cash from the detainees.

The detainees are: Onuorah Nnamdi Frank, 32, Udeze Obinna Ruben, 41, Macduhu Kelvin, 41, Frank Jacob, 35, and Tumpa Akhter, 23, who impersonated a customs officer.

The detained Nigerians have been living in Dhaka for years, RAB-4 operations Officer Assistant Superintendent of Police Ziaur Rahman Chowdhury said.

They used to cheat people and make friendly relationships with Bangladeshi nationals on social media. After a few days of conversation, the gang members lured them in with expensive gifts from the US, the RAB official explained.

Then, the Bangladeshi woman called the victims, posing as a customs officer, and asked them to deposit a certain amount as VAT and customs duties for the so-called gift parcel. She claimed that otherwise, the recipient would be fined a huge amount of money, the RAB official said.

The victims were asked to send money to different banks specified by their fraudster friends who lured the victims repeatedly with promises of very expensive gifts, ASP Ziaur Rahman added.

The RAB official said they will continue the drive to arrest the other accomplices of the gang.

Earlier on July 22, CID arrested 12 Nigerians and a Bangladeshi woman from the Pallabi area of the capital. All of them were the members of a gift fraud gang.