Police have arrested a Nigerian citizen who had allegedly duped a woman from Ilkal town in Bagalkot district, Karnataka, India of Rs 5.5 lakh on the pretext of marriage.
Bagalkot SP Siddarth Goel said that Oliver Ugwu Okechukwu, 47, was arrested by Bagalkot CEN police in Mumbai on Thursday, September 4, 2025.
Oliver, who stays in Mumbai’s Shivaji Nagar Bonkode Ganv, Khairane Thane, used to contact women after taking their details from the matrimony sites and cheat them.
He had befriended a woman (a divorcee seeking to remarry) from Ilkal who had uploaded her details on a matrimony site.
About a year-and-a-half ago, Oliver called the woman saying he had arrived in India and the customs officers at the airport had seized the US dollars worth Rs 1 crore.
He sought her help, saying he needed Rs 5.5 lakh to get the seized amount back.
He also gave her a bank account number to credit the amount. Trusting him, the woman transferred the amount through RTGS to that account.
After this transaction, Oliver allegedly stopped contacting the woman. Realising that she had been cheated, the woman lodged a complaint with cybercrime police in Bagalkot.
SP Siddarth said police investigation had revealed that Oliver was operating through the account on a fake name.
On tracking his other transactions done through Phone Pay and Google Pay, police came to know that he was in Mumbai’s Uppar Khairana police limits.
Checking the CCTV footage at the shops where he had done transactions helped police identify him, the SP explained.
Police have seized four cellphones, a laptop, and a passport.
Oliver was produced before the court, which sent him to judicial custody.
Additional SP Mahanteshwar Jiddi, DSP Girish Bhojannavar and SI Rudrayya Hiremath were part of the team that cracked the case.
