A 47-year-old Nigerian man, Oliver Ugwu Okechukwu, has been arrested in Mumbai, India, for allegedly scamming a woman from Ilkal town, Bagalkot district, Karnataka State, of Rs 5.5 lakh (approximately N9.5 million) with a false promise of marriage.
Okechukwu, who specialized in duping women through matrimonial websites, created fake identities and targeted vulnerable women, especially divorcees seeking to remarry.
He posed as “Satya Amit,” a supposed London-based professional, and contacted the Indian woman after finding her profile online. He gained her trust by posing as a wealthy man ready to settle down and promised to marry her.
After convincing her, he fabricated a story about being stranded in India with seized foreign currency worth Rs 1 crore and requested Rs 5.5 lakh to resolve the issue.
The woman wired the money into a bank account he provided, but immediately after receiving the funds, Okechukwu cut off all communication and disappeared.
The Bagalkot Superintendent of Police, Siddarth Goel, confirmed that Okechukwu was apprehended in Mumbai by operatives of the Cyber Economic and Narcotics (CEN) police following a detailed investigation.
Okechukwu had been operating multiple bank accounts under fake names to run his fraudulent schemes.
Further investigations are ongoing to determine if he scammed other victims across India.
The arrest highlights the growing menace of marriage scams by foreign nationals in India, prompting authorities to tighten cybercrime monitoring systems.
