Send ‘YES’ to Live & NO to Die: Nigerian in India Take Cyber-Crime to Another Level [PICZ]

They had allegedly forced hundreds of businessmen, particularly jewellers, across India to live in constant fear, even forcing a few to avoid coming to their shops. All these were done through SMS.

Two brothers, Vikas and Prakash and their Nigerian friend, Idehen Solomon Osazee perpetrate their heinous activities by sending text messages to their victims, asking them to pay an amount of money and also to reply ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ if they wanted to stay alive or not.

According to deccanherald.com, the trio, who have over 18,000 businessmen as targets, make use of free SMS services of foreign websites to send over 1,500 messages daily.

Police said the trio collected a huge database of businessmen operating in various parts of India, including Delhi, from different websites.

“They targeted jewellers, particularly because the cash flow in their shops is very high and security minimal. Also, they believed this community would prefer paying the ransom than getting into court cases,” said a senior police officer involved in the investigations.

The officer said they learnt that a few jewellers in Old Delhi even stopped visiting their shops for a brief while. The gang demanded “a reasonable amount” of money within 48 hours from the victims if they wanted to stay alive.

The group’s modus operandi is to send SMS to the jewellers that someone has paid them to eliminate the shop owners; that if the jewellers could pay them a similar amount they would be spared.

“They kept the amount comparatively low so that the jewellers would have lesser problems paying up and hence lower chances of a police complaint,” Ravindra Yadav, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) said. As they had expected, very few across the country filed police cases, and in Delhi, only three jewellers approached police.

Since a maximum of 100 SMSs are allowed from a SIM card in a day, they chose a foreign website offering free messaging services to reach out to more targets. If the businessmen were willing to pay up, they would have to reply a ‘YES’. Thereafter, they would have to deposit the money in the account and send them scanned copies of the bank receipt.

They also operate from crowded localities so that they could not be tracked down based on the devices they were using, said police.

Solomon, 30, and his Indian friends have tried their hands in lottery scams, but took to this crime after it failed. The trio was arrested on Wednesday night.

Over 70 SIM cards, 14 mobile phones, voter ID cards, PAN cards and other equipment and documents – all procured on fake identities – have been recovered from them.