Bareya said that when money wasn’t credited into the company’s account even after a day, he alerted his employees. “A day later, the accused again called up at the shop to enquire whether we had any costly mobile phones. They then visited the shop, selected a few mobile phones and placed the credit card for payment. The first two cards declined payment. Not letting them get the whiff of our suspicion, we made them wait in the shop and informed the police,” he added.

He also feels that the accused have been responsible for duping close to 20 branches of The Mobile Store in the city. “Nigerians were involved in all the fraud transactions and they had duped the store of Rs15 lakh over a month or two,” Bareya said.

“Atiya, who owns a mobile phone shop in Goregaon, befriended the Nigerians this year when they visited his shop. The Nigerians offered him a mobile phone for every con,” said senior inspector Rajdoot Rupwate of the Powai police station. Rupwate said that Atiya used these handsets and sold them at his shop.

Explaining the methodology used by the accused, sub-inspector Sanjay Joshi said while Atiya and Kachariya used to finalise the deal, Kayode and Watson used to pay using the forged credit cards.

The police have not ruled out a case of stolen international credit cards. “According to the banks’ rule, if a person shops for over Rs10,000 on credit card he or she has to submit an identity proof to the shop. We are verifying whether the cards recovered are actually owned by someone living outside India. Investigations are on to find their involvement in other such cases,” said Joshi.