By Chizoba Ogbeche Abuja
Police Special Fraud Unit (PSFU) yesterday arrested 11 suspected fraudsters, including three Heritage bank offi cials, and two MTN employees over N150 million fraud. Th e suspects allegedlysiphoning money from bank accounts using phone numbers linked to customers’ accounts said to have been obtained from shady MTN workers. Police investigation which lasted nearly three-month revealed that the gang were working across the country. Th e suspected bankers are Oyelade Shola-Isaac, 32; Osuolale Hammid, 40; and Akeem Adesina, 33; while the network service provider employees include Okpetu John, 29; Chukwumnoso Ifeanyi, 30; and Salako Abdulsalam, (ICT specialist), 30. Other suspects were Ismaeel Salami, 49, Akinola Oghuan, 34, Sarumi Abubakar, 32, James Idagu, 56, and Sunday Okeke, 33., stressing that they were all arrested in Lagos, Ibadan and Ilorin.
Spokesman of the unit, ASP Lawal Audu, who confi rmed the arrest said that staff of the bank and the communication company MTN had secretly run an information sharing business, robbing unsuspecting bank customers of millions of naira. Audu noted that the job of the banker’s suspects was to provide the syndicates with information of the bank customers with funded accounts that were not into internet banking. He said that the network providers assisted to swap the sim cards (GSM numbers) of the targeted bank customers so that they would be unable to receive alert of any transactions on their accounts within the period that their accounts were being siphoned.
Th e spokesman said the suspects transferred the money siphoned into about 40 other accounts with ATM in diff erent other banks, adding that the suspects usually carry out their operations during the weekends and public holidays to evade being detected by the bank monitoring mechanisms or the owners of targeted funded accounts. “Th e eff ort of the police team eventually paid off when the same group was holding their fi nal meeting at eateries along Bode Th omas Street, Surulere,l Lagos on the concluded plan to unleash another monumental fraud on unsuspecting customers.
“Th eir plan was to defraud another new generation banks between May 26 and 29,’2017. Detectives stormed the venue during which one of the major kingpin claimed to be Alhaji Ismaeel Salami and four members of the syndicate were arrested. “Th irty-fi ve ATM cards affi xed with account numbers and passwords were immediately recovered from them. It was, however, unveiled that this criminal syndicate usually sourced these bank ATM cards from their owners, especially among the vulnerable youths deceiving them to release their ATM cards, account numbers and passwords for eventual monetary rewards based on the amount their card receive,” he said. Th e spokesman, therefore, advised members of the public to be careful of fraudsters activities, warning them against giving out bank detains to strangers. Audu said that the suspects will be charge to court as soon as investigation is concluded.
