38-year-old Narender Sharma alias Rajiv Anand alias Roshan Verma and Gurmeet Kohli alias Rinki, 46, were arrested on Wednesday after receiving complaint from an NRI along with a Bangalore-based businessman, Raghavendra Bhat, about receiving mail about "business opportunity in India" from the accused, they said.
Two mobile phones, packet of dummy money, a sample packet of licorice seed and one laptop were recovered from them. Both of them were identified by the complainant as the same persons, who had taken Rs 43.5 lakh from him in 2010, a senior police official said.
Two of their associates, identified as Moses Ojeaga alias Abbas, 43, and Idowu Osho alias Abdul, both Nigerian nationals, currently residing at Hauz Rani were arrested when they came to deliver packets of licorice seeds to a decoy customer in Defence colony.
With the arrest of the four the SIT team of Crime Branch of Delhi Police has busted an international racket involved in fraud.
"The NRI had alleged that he received a spam mail in December 2010 from Canada about "Business Opportunity in India". He replied to it in the positive. Thereafter, he exchanged many mails with Terry John (name mentioned in the mail) and he asked him to supply "licorice seed" from India to their Canada-based company 'Theravaccine', said Sanjay Kumar Jain, DCP Crime and Railways.
Lured by the prospect of heavy profit, as the seeds are very rare and costly, he agreed to supply 100 packets of licorice seeds costing nearly Rs 90 lakh to Terry John's company.
On this, he contacted Verma on his mobile phone and the accused agreed to supply 100 packets of licorice seed for Rs 43.5 lakh. After settling the deal, Verma asked him to come to Delhi with cash Rs 43.5 lakh to take the delivery of 100 packets of licorice seed.
In December 2010, the complainant reached Delhi and contacted Verma, who called him near a cafe in Safdarjang Development Area Market. Two persons met him there and one of them introduced himself as Roshan Verma who gave him one packet as sample of licorice seeds.