In a chat with newsmen after their arrest recently, the suspects said the banks were too porous, like Nigeria’s borders notorious for being unguarded. They said fraudsters were feasting on the funds in the banks unhindered. They specifically mentioned two new-generation banks that were easy prey to fraudsters.

The fraudsters, who spoke with newsmen at the Nigeria Police Force, Zone 2 Command headquarters, Onikan, Lagos, where they were under interrogation by detectives attached to the Monitoring Unit, regretted that the police stopped them from enjoying the free money. 

They, however, claimed that the real culprit was still at large, carrying on the ‘business’ as usual, and they were only agents and employees of the main kingpin.

According to Zone 2 Police Public Relations Officer, SP Hawa Idris Adamu, “their arrest followed a petition on May 18, 2023, by a new generation bank to the Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) Muhammed Ali Ari that there were some syndicates that specialised in Internet fraud in various banks in Nigeria.

“They hack into customers’ accounts and move their money. Based on the petition, the AIG raised a team of detectives from the Zonal Monitoring Unit, which swung into action with the aid of modern technology.

“The two suspects were tracked down to their hideout at Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.”

One of the suspects, Yusuf Ademola, told news reporters how he got “lured” into the fraud syndicate, with his eyes fixed on the “free money” to be made with little effort in a short time. He said: “One of my guys in Kano gave me a phone Number so that I could help him open an account in a bank. I now called Adeshina to open an account with the phone number and he said he had an account in the bank already. He went there to change the phone number. He called me to say he had changed the number. I now called the guy in Kano to tell him that I had opened an account for him and he said no problem.

After an hour, he sent me N1.2 million and I gave Adeshina N500,000 and took N700,000. Just like that. I thought, this is how I will be enjoying free money every day. The police arrested him and they came to arrest me too. They asked why I opened an account in the bank; I told the police I was the one who asked him to open the account. I did not have an account.

“My guy said N1.2 million was my fee for opening the account for him. I first met the guy in Kano when I was serving in Nasarawa State, and we used to talk on the phone every day. I knew he was doing advance fee fraud (Yahoo). My guy told me that banks were very porous, like Nigerian borders, and they were picking money anyhow as banks were not ready to employ cyber security experts to help them secure people’s money. In fact, I am scared about what my friend told me. 

“He said that fraudsters were feeding fat from banks. Imagine if the police had not arrested me, I would have been making almost a million naira every week. My friend told me that he had recruited many people across the federation. As I am collecting money from him, so is he paying others, and other fraudsters are also doing the same business. So I am wondering how the banks are surviving. 

The police spoiled business for me. To be frank, I don’t know how my guy is doing it, but I was enjoying the money before the police stopped me. When he is arrested, he will be able to explain to the police how he does it. I swear, I don’t know how he does it, but once I recruited a person to open an account for him in the two banks he mentioned, he would pay me.” 

On his part, Adeola Abiodun Adeshina, who was recruited by Ademola, while narrating his role in the crime, said, on one fateful day, Ademola his friend met him and asked whether he had bank accounts in the two banks (names withheld) and he replied him that he had an account in one of the banks only.

“He gave me a phone number that we could use to open an account. After he sent it to me, I went to the bank and replaced the number on my account that I used to receive alerts from the bank with the new number. I can’t tell what they did with the account because, if you check, there was no money there. I agreed to change the number because he said someone wanted to use the account but the alert number should be that phone number he gave me.

“I changed the number six months ago. I was arrested along with him because they tracked me with the number on the account before. They asked why I changed the number and I explained that it was someone who gave me the phone number. I swear, I don’t know what they did. 

“I have received money two times. The first money was N500,OO0, and the second was N300,000. So I have only received N800,000. I was happy that my financial status had changed, until I was arrested. The police have stopped my business. I don’t know how to penetrate account codes to generate the kind of money they were sharing.”

Regardless of the suspects’ claims, the police say they are not resting on their oars where fraud and other related crimes are concerned. Detectives have been mandated to go all out to crush cybercrime and round up all scammers ripping off banks and their customers. AIG Ali, during a briefing, said: “The suspects have confessed that they had many syndicates all over Nigeria, and that they used software to hack into customers’ accounts and moved their money undetected by any bank.

“The modus operandi of these fraudsters is to have a customer’s BVN-linked phone number for easy transfer of money. I have directed the leader of the Monitoring Unit, CSP Uba Adams, to crack the syndicates across the country so that banks will breathe before they kill the banks.”