Posted by By Juliana Francis on
A suspected internet fraudster met his waterloo recently when he was apprehended by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on his way to church.
A suspected internet fraudster met his waterloo recently when he was apprehended by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on his way to church.
Chinedu Uzoechi, 34, is believed to be a notorious advance fee fraud specialist. Indeed, he confessed that he had been in the illegal business since 2003.
He was nabbed after a new generation bank wrote a petition to the EFCC, explaining that its website was illegally designed and was being used for some nefarious activities.
Working through an informant, operatives of the commission learned that one Olatunji Joseph Falore, living in Festac Town was behind the illegal website. Falore was said to have confessed that he designed the website for Uzoechi.
He admitted that his company was not registered.
A thorough search of Uzoechi's apartment yielded many documents, all suspected to be fake. They include letterheads of Federal Ministry of Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Federal Inland Revenue Services, High Court of Lagos, European Commission, Dominion Trust Finance Company, NNPC, NDLEA and EFCC. Death certificates were also found in the house.
Also discovered in Falore's home was a laptop which contained several e-mail addresses. Uzoechi told detectives during interrogation that he became a fraudster due to poverty. According to him, he decided to venture into internet crime after the man he served for four years, refused to set up a business for him as agreed.
Uzoechi further claimed that his late friend, Chocho, introduced him to 419 businesses. As his ambition grew, Uzoechi decided to explore new fields. However, the quest for more conquest led to Falore's downfall. He revealed that the fake documents and scam letters found in his house were used to fool victims into believing that he was a genuine businessman or a staffer of any of the companies he claimed to be working for. He insisted that he downloaded most of the documents from the internet.
As for the death certificates, Uzoechi claimed that he used to issue them to people who were desperately in need of them.