*Who is Reno Omokri’s next victim?*

The word fraudster has a ring to it, somehow it sounds a lot nicer than thief. Reno Omokri, unfortunately is both. Yeah I am talking about the same Reno Omokri who claims to be a pastor yet we are yet to find anyone who actually attends his church or service programmes. (PS: the offer still waits for their identification. I dare say he’d be more than willing to push up such a person towards the top of his #RenoMoni fraud pyramid).

Much has been said about the fraudulent acts such as profiteering from the sale of books and tee shirts in Leah Sharibu’s name without as much as providing financial details to back up claims. First he allegedly said he transferred the monies made from the tees to her family then realizing the gaffe claimed that the donations were made directly to her father’s account.

On the book front, Reno said “the royalties spent exactly five minutes in his account before they were also transferred to her father”. What the people and by this I’m referring to his teeming followers want to see or read is;

Who was monitoring the time?

Are royalties a one off event?

What’s happened to the income from the book sold since the first payout was done?

For those interested in his other bold but outlandish claims, I would recommend you dig up his responses to #RenoUndarted.

We would like to see some sort of audit else this would continue to hang over him like the sword of Damocles.

Reno also regularly claims to be a bestselling author yet the said book which is his claim to fame accumulates dust on Amazon’s shelves.

Since a liar would always steal, remember when our mothers told us that? It’s not surprising that Reno Omokri is a thief. Yes I say it and it’s actually the main crux of my write up. A man with absolutely no scruples about dragging the title of Pastor into the mud apparently seeing as he thinks everyone else is like him with absolutely no compunction nor morals about stealing the identity of another albeit that of his nephew.
Sometimes in 2014, Reno Omokri who was at the time, the SA to the President on New Media ushered Nigeria into the now popular crime of Identity theft. In order to smear and slander the name of the then suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Reno Omokri anonymously sent emails to editors across the country in the identity of his nephew, a certain Wendel Simlin with the email; wendellsimlin@yahoo.com.

To most persons Reno has always been a duplicitous character skilled in the dark arts but as we have come to find out he’s not very good at covering up his tracks or aligning his lies as those who investigated the issue then claimed they didn’t do anything special at all, just basic checks around the email and most crucially, the attached word document.

It was as simple as opening the attached word document and right clicking to pull up its properties. There it was – his name as the author and person who last saved it on Hewlett-Packard computer (this is automatically done when you use your computer to generate a document).

An online newspaper, Premium Times, who had received official emails from Reno Omokri in the past checked out previous email headers from him and compared it to this particular one from Wendell Simlin. They matched i.e. the emails were sent from the same computer/location.

But he is not one to be deterred. Religious baiting is a very dangerous thing to do in Nigeria but it is the main stay of Reno Omokri’s, I mean his modus Oparandi. Once the religious touch paper has been lit in Nigeria, no one really has any control over it and many lives could possibly be lost. The email sent out by Reno was dripping with Islamophobia and also contained outright lies and smears not just against SLS but against Alhaji Mutallab – a man who reported his own son to the American authorities when he noticed extremist tendencies in him.

Seems the latest feather he’s added to his cap of mischief, is taking on persons he believes are too relevant and then he tries to misinform the public and Christian bodies as he seeks to exploit them for personal gratification.

Well if he comes facing you as Reno the Fraud, let one fly and if he comes backing you as Reno the identity Thief, do hesitate to release the notch, for he only commeth to steal, deceive and destroy our relative peace.

Nicholas Adesina writes from Ibadan, Oyo state.