10th June, 2022
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has submitted reports of forensic investigations against singer Azeez Fashola a.k.a Naira Marley.
Naira Marley is charged with credit card fraud before the Ikoyi Federal High Court. He is faced with eleven charges bordering on alleged credit card fraud contrary to Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act and the Cyber Crimes Act.
Whyte Dein, the Chief Detective Officer of the cybercrime section, told the court that his team’s investigations revealed that the defendant was involved in credit card fraud.
According to reports, the singer committed these offences between November 26, December 11, and May 10, 2018.
However, he was granted bail after being arraigned on May 20, 2019.
At the resumed trial on Thursday, June 9, Dein, led in evidence by EFCC counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, told Justice Nicholas Oweibo that they discovered conversations on the defendant’s iPhone with one Raze who asked for a credit card details.
He said, “One of our findings from the forensic report shows the exchange of chat messages with several persons when the defendant sent credit card details, including card numbers and expiration dates.
“Visa card details were one of those sent by the defendant to a certain person known on his contact list as Raze. This message sent Visa Card details to Raze, after which Raze replied that the card was not valid.”
“We were able to establish through investigation the previous messages he sent with a wrong card that was indeed not valid. We then repeated the same process a second time which was now valid.”
Dein also explained that the singer used a multi-lingual browser to access illegal networks.
“The defendant used malicious tools to disguise the identity and location of the user of the laptop when connected to the internet along with the presence of the Top Browser which acted as a single gateway to the dark net.
“This gave us a reasonable ground to suspect that the defendant had been engaging in fraudulent card activities. And this was established through a reply to our request to Visa Western Union Card” he added.