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Lawrence Eromosele nabbed by the EFCC
Operatives of the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has arrested a
cyber crime suspect while attempting to travel with the
identity of a federal lawmaker in Lagos.
A press
release by Femi Babafemi,head media and publicity of the
Commission revealed that the suspect, Lawrence Henry
Eromosele was arrested at the Murtala Mohammed
International airport, ikeja Lagos when attempting to
board a United Emirate Airline flight to Dubai.
The
culprit, a light complexioned youngman who hails from
Edo State had hacked the e-mail address of Hon. Hamisu
Shira from where he got the lawmaker’s travel agent
contact details in Dubai. He soon presented himself as
the lawmaker to the travel agency with an instruction
that they send him an Emirate Airline business class
ticket to travel to Dubai. The agency had in turn
requested him to send a copy of his international
passport.
However,
upon presenting his passport which is suspected to have
been fraudulently acquired as it bears the name of the
lawmaker but has the picture of the culprit, the travel
agent who suspected foul play contacted the lawmaker who
thereafter reported the matter to EFCC. The
EFCC operatives swiftly swung into action which
culminated in the arrest of the culprit as he was about
to board the flight to Dubai on Friday ,6 February, 2009
at about 2.30pm.
Responding to questions from
journalists at a press conference where he was paraded,
Eromosele claimed that he was a footballer based in
Ivory Coast and that a certain John who wanted to help
him secure a professional football contract oversea gave
him the passport. His defence soon turned out to be
tissues of lies as he could not sustain his claim before
journalists who sought to know more about John and how
he acquired the international passport.
While
parading the suspect on Wednesday 11 February in Abuja,
the Commission says it has become imperative to alert
unsuspecting members of the public of the new trend in
cyber crime called phishing as scammers seem to have
changed their tactic from scam letter writing. According
to the Commission’s spokesman, fraudsters have now
resorted to phishing through which they hack into
people’s bank accounts and other personal data to steal
identities and commit fraud with it
“The
commission therefore wishes to alert members of the
public of this trend and equally warn them not to
respond to any enquiries asking them to give certain
information to update their banking details or
electronic card data. This is simply their ploy to have
needed information to hack into people’s bank accounts.”
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