The Police in India have arrested a 39-year-old Nigerian man, Gilbert Okoye Pedro, for duping over a dozen people in India by selling them spurious herbal vaccines.

Hindustan Times reported that two people who had invested Rs 1.5 crore (over N77 million) in his product had filed separate cases against him. Police said more people might come out to complain against the accused.

Police said Okoye introduced the scam, which originated in Macau a decade ago, in India. He scouted for targets on LinkedIn and lured them to invest in purchasing oil from an Indian company and exporting it to Ghana to earn high profit, the police said.

“He claimed to be a representative of a Ghana-based company that import Folinic B12 oil from India for producing vaccines for race horses. He had also floated a fake Indian company that sold the herbal product,” said Anyesh Roy, deputy commissioner of police (Cyber Cell).

A resident of Vellore, Tamil Nadu, had complained against Pedro, police said. In his complaint, the victim said that Pedro had sent him a request on his LinkedIn profile, posing as Raphael Hougbendji, a Ghanaian working as the spokesperson of Animal Welfare Zoological Ltd. in his country.

“The foreigner proposed a lucrative business to the complainant – of exporting herbal vaccination products (Folinic B12 Oil) from India to Ghana. He told him that the oil is produced by an Indian company based in Assam. The complainant was told that the oil was available in India at a very low price and his company would buy it double its Indian price,” said an investigator.

“We tracked down the suspect’s whereabouts and finally caught him from a flat in Greater Noida. His interrogation revealed that he had cheated another investor from Tamil Nadu of R1.25 crore,” added Roy.