Court Jails Two Hackers For Union Bank N2. 55bn Fraud
Court jails two hackers who defrauded Union Bank Nigeria of N2. 55bn through their flexcube database . The lagos State High Court in Igbosere made this decision on Friday July 3.
The criminals, identified Abass Mohammed and Ibrahim Saidu Jogal, have been sentenced to one and three years’ imprisonment, respectively.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were notified of this scam after Union Bank filed a petition that its flexcube database was hacked with N2. 55bn stolen by the fraudsters. During the investigations the EFCC recovered money summing up to $464,000, a car and land.
In addition to the sentence, Justice K. A Jose ruled that these retrieved properties should be returned to the affected bank by the EFCC.
In a statement on Friday by Dele Oyewale, Head of Media and Publicity at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the court found the convicts guilty on two out of the three counts filed against them.
Oyewale said,
“Investigation into the petition revealed that the said money was fraudulently credited into the accounts of mostly Bureau De Change operators, including one Jaxmine BDC, Gona BDC and Great Well Communication.
Mohammed sourced for the bureau de change accounts and particularly got the details of JaxmineBDC from a certain Lawal Ubah who was signatory to the account and in turn gave the account detaiks to Zico, the syndicate’s ring leader.
“The sum of N450m was then credited into the account. Subsequently, the sum of N79m was transferred from the account of Jaxmine BDC into the account of Digare BDC owned by Jogal for the purpose of buying $500,000.
“Further investigations revealed that Jogal only paid $80,000 to Mohammed and kept the balance of $420,000.’’
During interrogation Jogal revealed that he got information leading him to believe that the money was fraudulent and that was a way of pushing Mohammed to say the truth, which he did.
