Two Nigerian hackers among four held for e-mail, facebook fraud

Kathmandu, October 17

Police have arrested four persons, including two Nigerian nationals, for allegedly hacking into email accounts of several persons and collecting cash by identifying themselves as genuine ones.

The suspects are Douglas Amobiok Oroigwe (passport number A07415374) and Julius Festus Chijelwu (passport number A08042087) of Nigeria and their Nepali associates Sneha Shrestha, 21, of Gorkha and Keshav Gurung, 21, of Dhading. They were arrested from Lalitpur and Kathmandu yesterday.

Oroigwe, 29, and Chijekwu, 24, who came to Nepal on July 21 on a visit visa, met Sneha and Keshav in Sorhakhutte-based The Potter House Church and befriended them for the purpose of hacking into email accounts of different persons and cheat them, said Metropolitan Police Crime Division.

In one case, the Nigerians hacked into the email account of Mingmar Lama, a trekking agent, and asked Armin Otto Riegr, a German citizen interested in visiting Nepal, to send USD 1,980 identifying themselves as Lama. “Shrestha received the cash through her account held with Everest bank and gave it to the Nigerians,” MPCD informed.

Similarly, the gang created a fake Facebook ID of ‘Mirable Wilson’ as a US Army officer and befriended Amrit Dahal, 24, a Nepali Army soldier, of Sankhuwasabha on the social networking site. “They asked him to send USD 6,890 to the bank account of Shrestha and Gurung,” MPCD said.

In yet another incident, they hacked into the email account of Rok Bahadur Gurung, a trekking agent in Bhaktapur, and received 2,835 euros sent by Far Sofian, a French national, for visit to Nepal. They also hacked into the email account of Merkulov Evrjenty, a German citizen, and collected USD 5,480 through Shrestha’s bank account.

Preliminary investigation shows that they defrauded many people of cash by hacking into email accounts and befriending various persons on Facebook. The arrestees have been charged under the Electronic Transaction Act and ‘Fraud’ chapter of Muluki Ain.