BENGALURU: Three Africans, who reportedly collected money from patients who were awaiting life-saving kidney transplants and donors willing to sell their kidneys, landed in custody.
Miracle alias Mimi and Matthew Innocent alias Paul, both from Nigeria, and Sowah Collins Nii from Ghana created a website in the name of a popular city hospital and allegedly cheated several people.
They had come to Bengaluru on student visas. They are residents of HBR Layout and Hegde Nagar in east Bengaluru.
The fraud came to light after Sagar Hospital medical director Mahendra Kumar filed a complaint. He alerted police about a fake website —www.sagarhospitals.site — that offered to buy and sell kidneys using the hospital’s name.
The accused issued advertisements online stating that they would arrange a kidney for Rs 4 crore.
The recipient has to pay them an advance of Rs 2 crore along with registration charges. If someone approached them to offer their organs for money, the accused would ask for registration and processing fee. Once the amount was paid online, they would go off the radar, police said. Their modus operandi was the same with those who are waiting for a transplant.
Based on the complaint, police contacted the company that controlled the domain registration and also managed to collect call detail records (CDRs) of the accused. They were taken into custody from Amruthalli. Police said the accused never met anyone and all the dealings were done online.
Police seized a laptop, mobile phones and other documents from them. Joshi Srinath Mahadev, deputy commissioner of police (southeast), requested the public to approach police if they hadlost money to the suspects.
