193 Chinese, Arabs, Filipinos Face Prosecution for Employing 600 Nigerians in Organised Cybercrime’s

 

A group of 193 Chinese, Filipino, Pakistani, Indonesian and Kazakhstani nationals face prosecution for employing about 600 Nigerians in an organised cybercrime syndicate based in Victoria Island, Lagos State.

Wilson Uwujaren, the Director of Public Affairs of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, narrated how the EFCC arrested 792 people suspected of engaging in romance scams and cryptocurrency investment fraud to swindle victims outside the country.

Uwujaren disclosed this on Monday during a media briefing at the Lagos Zonal Directorate of the EFCC.

He stated that the suspects were apprehended in the seven-storey Big Leaf Building, located at 7, Jolayemi Street, Victoria Island. The EFCC stated that it received intelligence about the suspects’ activities and made the arrests on December 10.

Uwujaren said that the building where the fraud was carried out could be mistaken for the corporate headquarters of a financial establishment.

“All the floors are equipped with high-end desktop computers. On the 5th floor alone, investigators recovered 500 SIM cards of local telcos that were bought for criminal purposes,” Uwujaren said.

He said that the foreign nationals used the edifice to train their Nigerian accomplices on how to initiate romance scams, and also used their identities to perpetrate criminal activities.

“Their Nigerian accomplices were recruited by the foreign kingpins to prospect for victims online through phishing, targeting mostly Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and several others from European countries,” Uwujaren narrated.

“They usually arm them with desktop computers and mobile devices and create fake profiles for them.

“The Nigerian accomplices are equally provided with logs that allow them access to foreign communication lines and victims, which they chat with on WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram.”

After assigning their Nigerian accomplices WhatsApp accounts linked to foreign phone lines, mostly German and Italian, they then engaged their victims in romantic and fake business and investment discussions to trick them into shopping on an online investment shopping platform called www.yooto.com.

“For those who show interest, activation fees for an account on the platform starts from $35USD,” the EFCC representative explained.

“Investigation revealed that the criterion for recruiting these young Nigerians is proficiency in the use of computers, especially typing skill. Those who passed the test are given desktop computers and mobile devices and then taken through a two-week induction on how to personate foreign females in romance scam chats and convince victims to invest in their employers’ cryptocurrency investment scam.

“Once the Nigerians are able to win the confidence of would-be victims, the foreigners would take over the actual task of defrauding the victims and proceed to block their Nigerian accomplices from the network. This would then leave them in the dark about the transaction.”

However, Uwujaren said that the Nigerian accomplices “do not know the owners of the ‘company’ they work for because they are not offered letters of appointments or receive payment from a corporate account” and they were usually paid either in cash or through an individual’s bank account.

Uwujaren said that the foreigners were hiding behind Nigeria’s bad reputation in terms of fraud to establish their criminal syndicate and claimed that Nigerians were not behind the prevalence of fraud emanating from the country.

“Foreigners are taking advantage of our nation’s unfortunate reputation as a haven of frauds to establish a foothold here to disguise their atrocious criminal enterprises. But, as this operation has shown, there will be no hiding places for criminals in Nigeria,” he said.

The EFCC recovered computers, mobile phones, personal computers and cars during the raid.

Uwujaren stated that the suspects would be charged in court as soon as investigations were concluded.