Police foil N160m fraud in Aba

Posted by admin Abia, Headlines, Nigerian Police, State News Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

A crack team of policemen from Ndiegoro Police Station in Aba, Abia State over the weekend foiled a fraud of N160 million involving a staff of a new generation bank with its branch on Cameroon Road, Aba and a customer.
According to Daily Sun source, another staff of the bank had suspected a fraudulent deal between one of his colleagues, Ogbonnaya and a customer of the bank simply identified as Kalu Ali and he alerted the police.

Investigations revealed that recently, the sum of N160 million was transferred from an account of Akwa Ibom State sub-treasury to a church account in the same Akwa Ibom State. The same day, the money was said to have been transferred to the account of Ali at the said bank with the assistance of Ogbonnaya who happens to come from the same Abiriba with the former.

It was discovered that the said Ali’s account with the bank had been dormant for the past three years, but was re-actived by Ogbonnaya. Within one month of the reactivation, N160 million was paid into it.
Daily Sun gathered that the suspect who was said to have no known means of livelihood but owned properties in Aba and Abiriba his home town, had defrauded the Akwa Ibom State government of the amount and first of all transferred the money to an undisclosed church account also in Akwa Ibom State before, on the same day, transferring the said amount to his account at the new generation bank in Aba.

Investigations further revealed that immediately the money was transferred to the bank in Aba, Ogbonnaya set out to assist his kinsman withdraw the money and perhaps domicile it with another bank to avoid the fraud being detected.
At first instance, Ali was said to have, through the assistance of Ogbonnaya, withdrawn the sum of N10 million. The second day, they made a withdrawal of N20 million and were set to make another withdrawal of N5 million the third day when the bubble burst. Another employee of the bank who suspected foul play all this while, alerted the police at Ndiegoro, Aba.

The police immediately swung into action and laid ambush in the bank. Immediately the duo withdrew the money, they were promptly arrested and the N5 million recovered from them. On interrogation, the men were said to have owned up to the crime as the police was still on the look out for three others said to have been involved in the fraud.

A reliable police source described Ali as a well known fraudster who had no known means of livelihood but owned one of the biggest houses in Abiriba in addition to three, three storey buildings in Aba.
The source said the suspect used the internet to get into the details of the accounts of government agencies and big corporate organisations and through the same source, he transferred whatever amount he intended to take from such bodies into his own account. The suspects, on interrogation, were said to have admitted to the crime.

When Daily Sun visited the Ndiegoro Police Station, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Mr. Joshua Bakyu was said to have travelled to Umuahia on official duty but a police officer who would not want his name in print, confirmed the incident.
He said that the police were liaising with the Akwa Ibom State government to ascertain if their own staff were also involved in the fraud and that the suspects would be taken to court after investigations.

-Sunwp_posts