Mugshot of Anthony Imonina Odemerho, Fashina Oluwabukola,
By Shsde Damiro
Detectives of the Police Special Fraud Unit, Lagos State have arrested a 32-year-old undergraduate of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Timothy Fashina Oluwabukola, and his co-conspirator and Proprietor of Resign Regal Academy, Benin City, Edo State, Anthony Imonina Odemerho, for alleged cyber fraud, money laundering, fraudulent conversion and stealing of airtime valued at N1,227,140,000.00.
The spokesman of the Unit and a Superintendent of Police, SP Eyitayo Johnson, confirmed the arrest of both men.
Johnson said the arrests followed a petition to the Police by one of the GSM operators in Nigeria after an Audit Report which showed discrepancies between Revenue Collection Accounts and Fulfilments.
He explained that the investigation revealed that between February and March 2024, Fashina, working in conjunction with yet to be identified 3rd-Party Web/Application Developers of the GSM Company, used a Virtual Private Network to encrypt their data and mask their IP addresses, compromised the Network of the GSM provider by utilising authorisation keys to gain entry into the Application Programme Interface of the firm.
He also said: “The functionalities of the API were manipulated by Timothy Fashina to replicate N100,000 repeatedly) airtime ticket genuinely bought on the network to obtain a series of multiple airtime fulfilments to the tune of N1,227,140,000.00 unto GSM numbers 08XXXXXX72, 08XXXXXX14 and 07XXXXXX28.
“Afterwards, Anthony Imonina, based in Benin City, Edo State, downloaded the mobile app of the GSM provider from Playstore and signed in with Timothy Fashina’s phone number.
“To proceed to the App dashboard, Anthony Imonina needs an OTP from the GSM Provider which the network automatically sends as an SMS to the phone housing/hosting the sim card at the time of the attempt to log into the App.
“It is at this juncture that Anthony Imonina contacted Timothy Fashina who promptly provided the OTP before the request timed out.
“Imonina imputed the OTP and is allowed entry into the GSM Mobile App of Timothy Fashina.
“Having gained access to the App and its features, Anthony Imonina proceeded to convert the fraudulently obtained airtime to data, using the ‘airtime-to-airtime’ options of the App, and shared/sold the same, using the ‘share-data’ option of the App, to 52 innocent subscribers which included individuals and companies.
“The sum of N1,314,644,835, being payments received for the sold data was traced to the bank accounts of Anthony Imonina who forwarded N1,220,147,000.00 to Timothy Fashina, having deducted his commission of N87,497,835.00.
“Proceeds of the fraud include 110 hectares of farmland at Iseyin, Oyo State N40,000,000.00, an uncompleted building at Oluwo, Abeokuta, Ogun State N6,000,000.00, a 2-storey warehouse at Okeyeke, Abeokuta, Ogun State, value yet to be determined.
“Inventory of Stocks in the warehouse N50,000,000.00, Towing/Truck Head N24,000,000.00, crypto wallet, 21,000 USDT, a gift to friends N16,000,000.00, two Hiace Buses, Toyota Sienna and a Volkswagen Bus.
“The Legal Section of the Unit has filed criminal charges against the suspects at the Federal High Court, Ikoyi – Lagos.
“Efforts are being intensified to arrest the 3rd party Developers who are members of the syndicate and to identify other assets acquired with the proceeds of fraud.”
