question: how did certificate forgers get jobs at the EFCC

question: how did certificate forgers get jobs at the EFCC? This is the question bothering my mind at the moment.

It can be explained, how certificate forgers get jobs at the Nigerian Civil Service, and eventually become ‘civil servants’’; at NITEL, MTEL, PENTASCOPE…and such eventually become ‘engineers’’; at Banks, even at the CBN, and such become Bankers,; in the Nigerian Police, and such become Policemen, etc. How about at the EFCC?

By Oscarline Onwuemenyi, Abuja
Published: Monday, 25 Aug 2008
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Sunday said it had dismissed 11 officials for forgery and other fraudulent acts.

The dismissed officials include three junior staff, four cadet officers, three senior staff and one management officer.

According to a statement by the Head of Media and Publicity in the commission, Mr. Femi Babafemi, and made available to our correspondent in Abuja, the affected officers were sacked between August 2007 and August 2008.

The dismissed officials were detected after routine investigations carried out on them to verify the authenticity of their academic claims revealed anomalies.

Those dismissed on account of certificate forgery include Adamu Samson, Usman Muhammed, Muhammed Umar, Collins Nwachukwu, Shola Pedro, Olatunji Oluwakeri, Adaka James, Akinwamide Oluwaseyi, Mohammed Maina, and David Ibhawoh.

While the 10 officers dismissed on account of forgery will not be prosecuted, the Chairman of the commission, Mrs. Farida Waziri, has, however, directed that Mr. Davies Idrisu Ibrahim, who was arrested in Lagos last week for conniving with others to defraud a suspect, should be dismissed and prosecuted.

He is expected to be charged to court this week.

source: EFCC dismisses 11 officials for forgery

 

This Nigerian Ambassador is definitely speaking my mind. As much as the perpetrators are guilty and should be made to face the full strength of the law, those victimized are guilty too.

 Meanwhile, the Nigerian Ambassador to Australia, Prof. Sunday Olu Agbi, has said that people being cheated in the so-called “Nigerian scams” are greedy and should be jailed.

According to an online publication, Agbi said on Sunday that Nigeria had gained a bad reputation because of the scams perpetrated by a few people, and that those who found themselves involved with the scams were equally as guilty as those running them.

It reads, “The Nigerian government frowns very seriously on these scams and everyday tries to track down those who are involved,” Agbi told the Sydney Morning Herald in response to a previous article on Australians falling for Nigerian scams.

“People who send their money are as guilty as those who are asking them to send the money,” he said.

Out of the 140 million people in Nigeria, Agbi said that 0.1 per cent were involved in scams. The scams, also referred to as 419 or advance-fee fraud, predate the Internet, but have exploded in recent years thanks to the proliferation of e-mail and instant money transfers.

Question:
– why do they want to profit from where they did not sow?
– why are such interested in becoming family members of dead African politicians who had a fat bank account in some European country, which cannot be accessed, except by someone living in such a country? Do they just agree to ‘send money’ to these scammers, all out of doing a favor to some poor soul in Africa, until such agree to give their bank account details, and get duped etc?
– why didn’t the scammed contact the nearest Nigerian Embassy/Consulate or the nearest police station in their country to verify such claims.

Ofcourse the tales these scammers tell are very captivating to covetous ears, but really, it takes two to tango. Gossip has a mouth and an ear: the mouth that gossips and the ears that listen.

Tags: EFCC, 419, scam

re- Four girls raped to Coma, Saint Annes Secondary School, Molete, Ibadan

If I were a member of the Nigerian Police in Oyo state, I would arrest ‘one of the principals’ interviewed in the news-exerpt below:

Hoodlums forced their way into the hostels of St. Annes Secondary School, Molete, Ibadan, Oyo State, on Monday night and raped four female students to coma.

Three of the students are in senior secondary school, SSS, while the fourth one is in the junior secondary school, JSS.

The incident occurred around 2 a.m. when the miscreants scaled the fence of the girl’s school while the students were fast asleep. They descended on their victims unmolested.

Daily Champion gathered that the rapists who were fully armed with dangerous weapons such as cutlasses, iron bars and charms, gained entry into the hostels through the back fence, thus beating the guards on duty.

They were said to have assaulted the head teacher, while most of the girls in the hostels were similarly beaten before being raped.

Our source said that the security guard at the main gate was unaware of the incident as the rapists prevented the girls from raising alarm, by scaring them with the dangerous weapons. The rapists later fled the scene, after which the head teacher took the girls to a nearby hospital. St. Annes School, Molete harbours five schools with a principal each.

One of the principals, who spoke under anonymity, said that this is not the first time miscreants will be coming to rape school girls in Molete area in Ibadan.

“This is a kind of thing that has been happening in the school which was not revealed to the public. In fact, similar thing happened only two months ago,” she said.

According him, efforts by the school’s authorities to beef up security at the school had not yielded positive result as hoodlums kept coming to the hostels to rape the girls.

Meanwhile, the assaulted girls are being treated at a hospital in Ibadan (names withheld), while the hospital management promised to conduct series of tests on them.

A doctor in charge of the hospital confirmed that four students were brought in with severe injuries. He however stated that they had been responding to treatment.

The Oyo State Commissioner of Police (CP), Mr. Bashiru Azeez, reacting to the incident, directed that security be beefed up at the school, while he urged the Police area commander to “fish out the rapists at all costs.”

source: here

Kidnappers Demand e-gold For Safe Return of Nigerian Soccer Player’s Brother

Now, this is new: Kidnappers demand e-gold payment as ransom:

 

Joseph Yobo is a vice-captain of the Nigeria national football team. He currently plays with the English Premier League club Everton and he is one of their top players.

Norum Yobo is Joe’s younger brother and Norum was just kidnapped by criminals in Port Harcourt, Rivers State about 10 days ago. The younger brother is being held for ransom and the psychotic kidnappers say they will plunge a knife through his heart, unless money[e-gold] is paid for his safe return. Yes, that is correct, they are demanding "ransom gold".

It seems like an ugly new twist on a very old crime, the kidnappers are accepting the ransom paid in e-gold digital currency!

Their statement as reported by the local press, "We demand $10,000, which must be paid to our e-gold account. We will like to call his family as soon as the number is given to us," the group said in a statement. (10k is about one million one hundred and ninety thousand naira).

The Guardian reports that the Matiaph Group (gang) has taken responsibility for the kidnapping.

Abductions are rather common in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of this country, but for the kidnappers to demand e-gold seems like something new. I trust that if the kidnapping progresses to a payment stage, the e-gold techs will be tracking the $10,000 digital payment through their AT&T servers in ‘real time’ on one of those comfortable workstations in their Melbourne, FL offices.

I would not want to be the local agent in Nigeria who receives that gold for outexchange….ouch…that sting…that is the very long arm of the law. Kidnappers and e-gold, don’t mix.

Too bad for e-gold, because all the positive press in the world can’t spin the company out of that one.

I can hear the kidnapper’s statement, "we selected e-gold ransom payments because of no start up costs, all transactions are final (unlike credit cards) and the transfer fees we pay on our ransom monies are very low". Even Baghdad Bob can’t spin this story. Kidnapper with guns, using e-gold. (I have the new design for this year’s Christmas cards)

There is another aspect of the kidnappers decision to accept e-gold. This one is outlined in the recent .pdf from the U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center report entitled Money Laundering in Digital Currencies.
Additionally, because the value of digital currency accounts changes with the market performance of the backing commodity, any profits earned (capital gains) during the withdrawal of digital currency accounts may not get reported to the IRS unless the digital currency account holder decides to declare the amount voluntarily.
Consequently, if the kidnappers receive the e-gold ransom payment in the morning and the value of spot gold goes up before they can sell it, technically the kidnappers would be liable to pay some additional fees and tax on the profits earned from the move in the price of gold known as the "capital gain" on their ransom transaction.

Of course that tax is only required if the kidnappers are US citizens and working in Nigeria and then they would be voluntarily reporting that extra income (fingers crossed on that one)

We’ll get back to you on those regulations, but perhaps it’s time for a bit more verification on those e-gold accounts? What do you say Doug? Food for thought?

Usually, the local militia kidnappers target oil-workers as we have so often watched on CNN. The images show a small group of white guys chained together looking very nervous, surrounded by some pretty mean looking ‘tough guys’ sporting Soviet made post cold war surplus automatic weapons and really cheap sunglasses.

Besides the trauma to Yobo’s family, this kidnapping, has sent some big shockwaves through the Nigerian sporting community.

A very popular Nigerian blogger friend and digital money enthusiast, Oluniyi David Ajao, had this to say about e-gold and the recent troubles,
"Whether is privacy or anonymity, it is a problem for e-gold and e-gold has been attempting to reverse this ugly trend for several months now with little success. Criminals still rely on e-gold and some online businesses like EasyDNS have stopped using e-gold entirely. Its brush with the United States Department of Justice, it’s IP-blocking spree, account locking, DDos attacks, and the death of its primary exchanger OMNIPAY have all been a combination of factors that have made e-gold very unattractive in recent times. Exchangers now charge between 25% and 50% for converting e-gold to national currencies!"

http://www.davidajao.com/blog/2008/07/14/e-gold-privacy-feature-its-nemesis/

We pray for the safe return of the Yobo’s family member along with the arrest and prosecution of these kidnappers or criminal gang which have chosen to misuse the e-gold system.

http://www.dgcmagazine.com

source: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/68546