A 1st prosecution witness in the trial \u00a0of Eze Harrison Arinze, has told \u00a0Justice J. K. Omotosho of the Federal High Court sitting in \u00a0Abuja,\u00a0\u00a0how Arinze received $382,000 (Three Hundred and Eighty Two Thousand United States Dollars) worth of bitcoins from his victims before his account was blocked by his Virtual Asset Service Provider , VASP.<\/p>\n
The witness,\u00a0 Ogunjobi Olalekan,\u00a0 an officer of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, told the court that Arinze\u2019s victims were deceived into withdrawing their funds and deposited them into Arinze\u2019s bitcoin accounts, thinking that they were transacting legitimate businesses.<\/p>\n
Arinze was arraigned on March 22, 2023, before Justice Omotosho, on five count charges bordering on obtaining by false pretence and money laundering to the tune of\u00a0 $769,263 (Seven Hundred and Sixty Nine \u00a0Thousand,\u00a0 Two Hundred \u00a0and Sixty Three United States Dollars).<\/p>\n
One of the counts against him reads; \u201cThat you, Eze Harrison Arinze alias Charlotte Brain, sometimes between April, 2022 and December, 2022, in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court of Nigeria, did fraudulently impersonate one Charlotte Brain, a purported owner of Digitrades.Ltd\/Digitrades.Net\/Swiss-Earnings\/Craystal-Trade investment platform on Telegram and in that assumed character obtained crypto currency worth $592,000.00(Five Hundred and Ninety Two Thousand USD) from your victims through your bitcoins wallet address-333\u2026. Domiciled with Coinbase, a Virtual Assets Service Provider (VASP) and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 22(3)(b) Cyber Crimes (Prohibition, Prevention) Act, 2012 and Punishable under the same Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another count reads: \u201cThat you, Eze Harrison Arinze alias Charlotte Brain, while being the owner of Digitrades.Ltd\/Digitrades.Net\/Swiss-Earnings\/Crystal-Trade, a purported investment platform on Telegram, sometime between 28th October, 2022 and 7th December, 2022, in Abuja within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court, with the intent to defraud, obtained 9.771 bitcoins worth $168,000.00(One Hundred and Sixty Eight Thousand US Dollars) transferred to your bitcoins wallet address 333\u2026, domiciled with a Coinbase, a Virtual Assets Service Provider(VASP) under the false pretence that the said sum is for crypto currency investments, which you knew to be false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 1(1)(a) of the\u00a0 Advance Fee Fraud and Other\u00a0 Fraud Related Offences Act, 2006 and punishable under Section 1(3) of the same Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pleaded not guilty to the charges when they were read to him.<\/p>\n
At the resumed trial of the case,\u00a0 Olalekan told the court that:
\n\u201cWe requested for users on the platform who have deposited crypto currency to the defendant\u2019s account and their names were provided. About thirty persons on the platforms deposited various sums of bitcoin to the defendant’s\u00a0 account\u201d.<\/p>\n
Continuing,\u00a0 he explained that:\u00a0 \u201cthose that were identified were from thirteen different countries- the total inflow to his bitcoin wallet address based on the response was about 15.5btc valued around $382,000 (Three Hundred and Eighty Two United States Dollars and the defendant has withdrawn about 5btc before it was blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the information of these users who deposited the funds, showing their user identities, location, money deposited at different intervals, \u00a0wallet addresses where these funds were sent to at different intervals\u201d, he said.\u00a0 He further stated that other vital information like \u201cthe amount they sent,\u00a0dollar equivalent, \u00a0email addresses of depositors,\u00a0 transaction identities\u201d, were also disclosed.<\/p>\n
Olalekan told the court that 28 out of the\u00a030 depositors were reached\u00a0 through\u00a0 their email addresses to establish the purpose of the various sums they\u00a0 deposited in the defendant\u2019s\u00a0 account and what they knew about\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSwiss-Coin, Swiss earning, Swiss coins and Digitrades.ltd.\u201d<\/p>\n
After listening to the witness testimony, Justice Omotosho adjourned the matter for continuation to June 14, 2023 and ordered the remand of the defendant in Kuje Correctional Centre.<\/p>\n
\u25aa\ufe0e By Wilson Uwujaren<\/strong>, Head, Media & Publicity, EFCC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 1st prosecution witness in the trial \u00a0of Eze Harrison Arinze, has told \u00a0Justice J. K. Omotosho of the Federal High Court sitting in \u00a0Abuja,\u00a0\u00a0how Arinze received $382,000 (Three Hundred and Eighty Two Thousand United States Dollars) worth of bitcoins from his victims before his account was blocked by his Virtual Asset Service Provider , […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":63906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5824,164,50],"class_list":["post-63905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bitcoins","tag-efcc","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63905","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=63905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}