3rd September, 2019
The suspects are Chika Augustine and Godspower Nwachukwu.
They were arrested in Abuja and $35,000 has been recovered from Chika Augustine, said Aminu Ado Aliyu, head of Abuja office of the EFCC.
Aliyu said the men were arrested before the FBI came out with its indictment of the 77 Nigerians, with 14 arrests made in the US.
“Prior to the release of the FBI list, we had in collaboration with the FBI, cases under investigation of which 2 suspects indicted in the list released by the FBI are in our custody. On the other hand, another suspect on the list is being investigated independently on a different case and his case is pending arraignment”, Aliyu said.
He also said the agency recovered N423 million, $39,253 and €2330 between January and August 2019.
Aliyu disclosed that the zone was also focusing on cybercrime through intelligence gathering and collaboration with other agencies across the world.
The Zonal Head disclosed that 33 convictions have been secured from January 2019 till date; 293 arrests have made and over 465 cases are currently under investigation.
He further warned that the modus operandi of these criminals include and not limited to Love scams, Email Phishing, Identity theft and Fraudulent Bitcoin and crypto currency sales.
Aminu also cautioned the public against the prevalence of Fraudulent Bitcoin sales seeing that it is on the rise.