Another mail popped up in the victim’s inbox around 10 days later, asking him to deposit Rs 2.5 lakh as embassy charges, visa-processing fees, work permit application, and travel expenses in another bank account.
A Nigerian woman was on Tuesday arrested in Bangalore, India, for allegedly posing as a Canadian Embassy official and defrauding a jobseeker.
Dacosta Modupeoluwa Oriyomi, 27, who hails from Abeokuta, Ogun State, had got in touch with the Indian resident in Baguiati and pretended to be an official of the Canadian Embassy after the victim uploaded his resume on various job portals two years ago.
Oriyomi offered to help the man get a job and settle down in Canada with his family.
Kunal Agarwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, said preliminary investigations revealed that the woman had been running the racket for several years.
“She has duped many young job-seekers,” he told Telegraph India.
All emails sent by Oriyomi bore an image of the Canadian flag and were marked Government of Canada, the commissionerate officer said.
The victim Oriyomi exchanged several emails before the latter informed the complainant that his resume had been selected by the official placement agency of the Canadian Government and that he had been offered a lucrative job there.
Oriyomi asked the man to send him another series of emails, asking him to deposit money as immigration charges. She also emailed him a bank account number.
“The man transferred around Rs 5 lakh to the bank account,” he said.
Another mail popped up in the victim’s inbox around 10 days later, asking him to deposit Rs 2.5 lakh as embassy charges, visa-processing fees, work permit application, and travel expenses in another bank account.
“He deposited the money once again and the woman mailed him saying he would receive his flight tickets within 15 days,” the officer said.
Oriyomi sent the man a fake appointment letter with a joining date in January, the officer said.
A few days later, the man received another mail asking him to deposit Rs 5 lakh as travel and accommodation expenses. But he told Oriyomi that he had run out of money.
The mails stopped coming and all correspondence to Oriyomi went unanswered.
The victim lodged a complaint with Salt Lake cybercrime police station in February last year.
Oriyomi had masked the IP address from where the mails had been sent using special software that rerouted it to servers in other countries, police said.
“We tracked the bank account numbers to which money had been sent and managed to zero in on her location. A team was sent to Bangalore and she was arrested,” the officer said.