Juliana Francis



Operatives of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Lagos State Police Command, Ikeja, have arrested a cleaner for attempting to defraud a company of N500 million. The cleaner, Sylvester Ahuja, was said to have initially stole N2 million from the company. Ahuja was arrested at 911 Hotel, Warri in Delta State.

Police said the suspect, sometime in April, hacked into the email of a Lagos-based company, posing as the managing director and instructed the firm’s accountant to disburse N2 million into his Access Bank account. Ahuja, using similar gimmicks in June, requested the payment of N500 million into a Zenith Bank account.

The company detected this and quickly alerted the police. The RRS operatives, in their investigations, discovered that the initial N2 million was with-drawn with a debit card belonging to Ahuja. Ahuja, however, denied hack-ing into the account of any company, insisting that his friend, Emmanuel, was behind the fraud.

The suspect explained he met Emmanuel, a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member at his work place in April. He said: “Emmanuel is serving in Warri. He told me around April that he was stranded and that somebody was going to send money to him. He asked me to allow him to use my Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card because he couldn’t locate his own.

I released it to him with my Personal Identity Number (PIN). He told me that I should alert him whenever I received credit alert on my phone and I did.

“I expected these transactions to have been completed after two days. After almost a week, I saw him and I requested for my ATM, he told me he was still using it. After that, I asked him again, and he told me that he had misplaced it.

That was how he didn’t return the debit card again. My salary came and I approached the bank. I was told my account was having issues. That was the moment I got to know my account was used for fraudulent transactions.

“Since the episode, I have not been able to trace Emmanuel. I was informed when I started haunting for him that he was out of Warri.” The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Olarinde Famous-Cole, said that investigation was on going and that the suspect had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigations Department (SCID), Panti, for further investigations.

lalasticlala