The South-east Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Wednesday, May 1, 2019 arrested 37 suspected internet fraudsters in Owerri, the Imo State capital.<\/p>\n
The arrest, an EFCC statement by spokesman, Mr. Tony Orilade, followed a raid on\u00a0some targeted\u00a0residences\u00a0in\u00a0Okwu Urata, Aladinma and Egbu areas. The Commission\u2019s action followed \u00a0intelligence report which pointed that the suspects were living lavish lifestyles\u00a0without any known means of livelihood,\u00a0alleging further that\u00a0they\u00a0specialize in\u00a0defrauding unsuspecting victims, through the internet.<\/p>\n
In the course of executing\u00a0the search warrants,\u00a0items which included\u00a0laptop computers,\u00a025\u00a0five exotic cars,\u00a0which include\u00a0several brands of\u00a0Mercedez-Benz, Lexus,\u00a0Toyota\u00a0and expensive mobile phones, were recovered.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the development, the Zonal\u00a0Head, Usman Imam,\u00a0who said the exercise was in line with the Commission\u2019s mandate decried the high rate of cybercrime in the zone which he\u00a0blamed on\u00a0the\u00a0erosion and breakdown \u00a0of \u00a0country\u2019s values.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that no society has been able to totally eradicate crime, but we are ready at least to reduce it to the barest minimum and it appears that this cybercrime is one of the challenges of our time,\u00a0which\u00a0the\u00a0EFCC is willing to face drastically,\u201d Imam\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
Questioning the lifestyle of the suspects, Iman said; \u201cWhat is the business of a\u00a0university student, a new graduate\u00a0or youth corper looking for money to buy a car of N10 million? Obviously, this is rushing life and a collapse of our positive value system where people rarely want to start from a humble beginning,\u201d Imam\u00a0added.<\/p>\n
Usman lamented that if nothing\u00a0wasdone, the country\u2019s\u00a0leadership could be jeopardized as many youths involved in cybercrimes are expected to take up leadership positions in the future.<\/p>\n
The suspects\u00a0who volunteered their statements under caution\u00a0will be charged to court as soon investigations into the matter are concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The South-east Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Wednesday, May 1, 2019 arrested 37 suspected internet fraudsters in Owerri, the Imo State capital. The arrest, an EFCC statement by spokesman, Mr. Tony Orilade, followed a raid on\u00a0some targeted\u00a0residences\u00a0in\u00a0Okwu Urata, Aladinma and Egbu areas. The Commission\u2019s action followed \u00a0intelligence report which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}