A court in Ilorin has sentenced a 24-year-old man to six months’ imprisonment.
A Justice of the Federal High Court in Ilorin, Justice Muhammed Sani has sentenced 24-year-old Taiwo Oluwapelumi Emmanuel to six months’ imprisonment for a one-count charge bordering on impersonation.
Emmanuel who allegedly posed as a denizen of United States of America to defraud unsuspecting victims.
The defendant was among the suspected internet fraudsters arrested in the Ogbomosho area of Oyo State on October 26, 2021, during a thorough combing operation by the Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic Financial Crime Commission.
The defendant in his various chats posed as a contractor and businessman based in the United States of America, a decoy which he employed to defraud his victims.
Similar situation was also reported in Enugu, where the officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested a suspected fraudster, Kelechi Vitalis Anozie, who has been on the watch-list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 2019.
The EFCC in a statement said its operatives arrested Anozie on the 10th of March, following an investigative trail of activities not unconnected to fraud and illegal money laundering.
Anozie, who is a self-professed clergyman and four other suspects: Valentine Iro, Ekene Ekechukwu (alias Ogedi Power), Bright Azubuike (alias Bright Bauer Azubuike), and Ifeanyi Junior, is alleged to have defrauded many Americans.
The suspect, who is the founder of a church called Praying City Church in Owerri, Imo State, was first placed on a watch list in 2019 when the FBI announced charges against 80 people, most of them Nigerians, in a wide-ranging fraud and money laundering operation that netted millions of dollars from victims of internet con jobs.