[Dhaka Tribune] A Nigerian national accused of defrauding a Bangladeshi university professor of thousands of US dollars to attend a bogus conference in the United States was put on a two-day remand on Friday.Earlier in the day, police produced him before the court with a seven-day remand prayer.
Donatus Emeka Onyejiuwa had been in Bangladesh for three months when he was detained by Detective Branch (DB) police at a hotel on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway on Thursday.
He was taken to Sylhet for interrogation and produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
Donatus is allegedly part of an international gang which conned Tk4.76 lakh out of Prof Faruque Miah of the genetic engineering department at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), on the pretext of making arrangements to send the academic to a seminar abroad.
"Prof Faruk Miah received an email invitation in February, to a seminar in the USA," Paritosh Ghosh, additional commissioner of Sylhet Metropolitan Police, told a press briefing on Friday.
He said that a few days later, professor Faruk expressed his interest in attending the seminar by return email. The "organizers" then asked him to send $500 to book a hotel room for 10 days in the USA.
Prof Faruk suggested he could stay with friends in the USA but when this idea was rejected by the fraudsters, he paid the money through Western Union Money Transfer via a contact in Belgium.
"The gang has a bank account in Dinajpur’s Hili," Gopal Chakraborty, additional deputy commissioner of Sylhet Metropolitan police detective branch, said. "They might have more bank accounts. We are tracking down mobile numbers of the gang."
On March 1, Professor Faruk got an email saying the US immigration service had confirmed his visa, which would arrive by March 19-21.
He was then asked to send photocopies of his passport plus $160 in visa fees, $95 for insurance fees and $1,399 as a deposit which, he was told, would be refunded at the airport when he returned home from the seminar.