BY the time he is 28, Olufemi Akinlaja might have spent seven years in prison. He can only be saved from this predicament if the court is lenient when he faces it over charges of Internet scam and obtaining money by false pretences.

Pray, what has 21-year-old Akinlaja done to deserve being locked behind bars for such a long period of time, wasting his productive years? It is alleged that the suspect ‘stole the identity‘ of a serving army officer, Brig.-Gen. J.O. Komolafe, and used the interface to swindle the general‘s friends.

Akinlaja, who was arrested after the victim lodged a complaint to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, that some unknown persons blocked his Yahoo account and sent scam mails to his friends requesting funds, is not denying the allegations levelled against him.

Hear him, ”I will not say I didn‘t do it. I am guilty of all the crimes. One day I went to the cyber café and designed the web page. I sent this web page to numerous recipients asking them to change their Yahoo identification and passwords. I have the software that can divert all their responses to my own personal mail box from where I now get their contact details. The general‘s own was part of it.”

Glad that he had caught a ‘big fish,‘ Akinlaja contacted the general‘s friends, asking them for money. ”I sent numerous mails to his friends asking them to send me money to sort out an emergency family problem. Some of them responded thinking it was the general,” Akinlaja said.

http://punchontheweb.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200912063461878

Smart young boy wasting his brain in Nigeria. If the economic situation in Nigeria is tolerable, this young man would have been half way into obtaining his masters degree. What he did was wrong but the same government that jailed him fueled these actions. I expected the judge to be a little lenient because of his age tho.

I do not think that the Nigerian economic woes made the boy in question act likewise. I think fraud runs in his veins and arteries. Gashua awaits him.

Andre Uweh:

I do not think that the Nigerian economic woes made the boy in question act likewise. I think fraud runs in his veins and arteries. Gashua awaits him.

Crime does not run in veins; its not a genetic factor. It's either one becomes a criminal by association or by circumstances around him or her.

lol.

I said it,

Crime is factored on environmental conditions, and not genetics.