By Christopher Oji
The Lagos State Police Command has arrested a man who specialised in recharging call credit from other people’s bank accounts. The suspect, Ebenezer Oyeneye, a 50-year-old truck driver, was arrested by operatives of the Rapid Response Squad of the command.
A woman had reported at Aguda Police Station that an unknown person has been recharging his or her phone call credit through her bank account at one of the new generation banks in the country since July 2016.
The victim complained about the frequency and sum of money, which the suspect had withdrawn from her bank account by purchasing credit “top up,” which was debited from her account.
According to the victim, she noted that the fraud began on July 4, 2016, after she received a debit alert from her bank that she had recharged N1,000 call credit for her phone line without sending such command or initiating such a transaction.
“I was amazed when my financial institution notified me of a debit on my bank account and the same thing continued for about 11 months,” she said.
The woman filed the case with the operatives of the Aguda Divisional Headquarters, Aguda, Surulere, from where it was transferred to RRS for in-depth investigation. This led to the arrest of the suspect and questioned on his involvement in the crime by the decoy team of the RRS.
He confessed that in July 2016, he was trying to make a living after the truck he was driving was taken from him by the owner due to a misunderstanding. He claimed that with nothing to fall back on, he found a means of livelihood after trying to recharge his phone line with a code and was credited N1,000 immediately.
“I tried it the following day and I was credited with N3,00O. So I continued day in day out for months. I became so overwhelmed by the value of my call credit balance and I immediately resorted to selling my loot to people around me for months before I was blocked off.
“The maximum I could recharge from the account was N3,000 per day because my network provider restrict me to a daily top-up of the said amount. I then started selling from the proceeds and collected cash from my customers.”
The suspect confessed to have been sharing his loot with his wife and mistress.
He said: “The police may not be lying when they said that I had stolen over N400,000. I don’t doubt it because I knew how much I sold and how many calls I was making for almost a year. Well, it has happened, there is nothing I can do than to face the music.”
Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Olarinde Famous-Cole, adviced members of the public to seek professional advice from their financial institution before connecting their bank account to any online transaction and report immediately any case of strange activities on their bank account to the necessary authority.