Former additional advocate general of Punjab Lakhinder Bir Singh was taken for a ride by some persons who sent him e-mails saying he had won an e-mail lottery of 2 million pounds (approximately Rs 16 crore).

Singh claimed that he never got the money but instead became poorer by about Rs. 4.12 lakh, which he kept paying to the agents who were supposed to deliver the money.

After lodging a complaint with the Chandigarh Police in October 2007, the advocate has finally managed to get a criminal case registered against the two--Clifford Michael (General Director of Operations) and Ali Kamara of Alliance Courier and Finance of New Delhi. The duo have been booked on charges of cheating Singh and an investigation has been launched by the UT Police (Crime Branch).

On May 12, 2007, Singh received an e-mail, purportedly from Online UK National Lottery of the UK, intimating him about the lottery win.

“I was asked to send my personal details to a man named Owen Greens for verification of my claim, which I did. I was asked by the Claims Department of the Lottery to opt for courier delivery of the cheque or to have an account opened in the UK into which it could be deposited. I was also asked to contact one Mc Donald T of the fund transfer department of Citi-International Bank, for the cost of account- opening and transfer thereto,” Singh mentioned in his complaint to the police.

On June 18, 2007, Mc Donald T, allegedly asked Singh to send 500 pounds to the account of another man, Dominic Hanks, in Barclays Bank, Manchester (UK) towards opening his account. Singh claimed he had sent the amount on June 25, 2007, through his account in HDFC bank.

“Without my knowledge, Mc Donald dispatched a parcel to my address through TNT Courier Services, England, which was withheld by the Inland Revenue Tax Department of the United Kingdom for non-payment of non-residential fee of 1650 pounds as per the Tax Department’s mail dated July 4, 2007, to me”, Singh added.

“When I complained about this to Mc Donald, he agreed to bear 650 pounds as it was his mistake and requested me to pay 1000 pounds, which I sent on July 18, 2007, and in response to that, on July 20, I received another mail from Mc Donald saying that he had made the settlement with the tax-department and the documents had been released and would be delivered to him by a courier agency,” Singh mentioned in his complaint.

According to Singh, while he never opted for any courier agency’s intervention, the agents purportedly based in the UK sent him the parcel through Alliance Courier and Finance. Singh was then asked to bear the courier charges by Clifford Michael, which he did to the tune of about 4,400 US dollars.

Finally, on August 14, 2007, Ali Kamara met Singh in a 5-star hotel in New Delhi and delivered him a white-trunk filled with wads of black paper, cut to the size of the US dollar. “Kamara washed two similar-looking and same-sized papers (which he had probably brought with him) with a few drops of a liquid in a bottle to produce genuine-looking 100 dollar notes and then said that the rest of the liquid in the bottle had frozen and a new bottle will have to be procured.

He took the bottle with him and asked me to take the trunk to Chandigarh, which I brought. On returning home, I realised that I had been cheated and had become another victim of the “black-dollar” scam. Later, the two — Kamara and Michael — started threatening me on the phone and demanded their share of 8 lakh US dollars, claiming they had delivered the consignment to me. I had no other option but to lodge a complaint with the police”.