A female member of a syndicate, which specialized in stealing investors’ dividend warrants and paying same into their private bank accounts, has been nabbed by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The 40-year-old lady, who gave her name as Sarah Akpan, was arrested alongside a man, whose name the commission declined to disclose as “he was still undergoing investigations.”
Described by the EFCC as serial stock fraudster, the suspect and members of her gang were alleged to have specialized in stealing dividends warrants, forging stock sales mandates and depriving holders of their investments .

There are, however, strong indications that the syndicate worked in connivance with some unscrupulous companies’ registrar staff and stockbrokers.
Nemesis caught up with Akpan recently when operatives of the EFCC, who had been on her trail received information leading to her arrest.

The modus operandi of members of the syndicate, Daily Sun gathered, was to steal the dividend warrants and pay them into their bank accounts. It was learnt that they had made millions of naira from the stock fraud before the EFCC smashed the gang.
It was also gathered that Akpan and her male counterpart once went to Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos branch of a commercial bank to open an account, using different names and paying in some dividend warrants.

They were said to have gone to another bank, where they opened an account with N10,000 and in a matter of weeks, the money had increased to millions of naira, making the bank officials to suspect their activities .
On the day of her arrest, Akpan had impersonated a director of Impact Management Limited and wanted to collect refund money due to the company from an over- subscribed stock.
Daily Sun gathered that the company had invested in a public offer which was over- subscribed. That made the registrar to the issuing house to refund N4,185,952.60 to Impact Management Limited.
According to EFCC operatives, the refund was made in January but it never got to the company.
Unknown to the company, the instrument had been hijacked by the suspect who had opened an account in a bank in the name of a female director of the company, Ibinos Sarah Tansi.

When the issuing house was notified by Impact Management Limited that it had not got the refund, machinery for investigations to locate the posted instrument of refund was set in motion.
Luckily, on April 23, 2008, they received a phone call from a bank, requesting payment confirmation in respect of the returned money and they promptly instructed the bank to stop the payment as the instrument was said to have been stolen.

Daily Sun learnt that EFCC was alerted at that stage, leading to the arrest of the suspect.
Investigations by EFCC revealed that Akpan had been in the stock fraud business for a long time.
The investigation further showed that she had assumed the identity of one Mrs. Ibironke Iyanda Mosaku, forged her mandate and got her brokers to sell off her shares.

According to the EFCC source, the mandate was executed and N2,600,000 was paid into an account which she opened, using a fake International passport bearing the name of Ibironke Iyanda Mosaku.
It was further learnt that before the real owner of the share could know about the sale, Akpan had vanished into thin air with her loot.

“This happened sometime last year and the matter was reported to the EFFC, but all efforts to track down the suspect proved futile. But the suspected lady of fraud and her syndicate continued to spread misery among unfortunate investors,” an EFCC source told Daily Sun.

EFCC is, however, accusing some unscrupulous brokers who target dormant investors that don’t keep track of their investment of colluding with the fraudsters. EFCC spokesman, Osita Nwajah confirmed arrest of Akpan, adding that she would be charged to court soon.