Date: 2021-06-22

A member of the National Youth Service Corps serving in Ibadan, Oyo State, Caleb Oyeyemi, has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for Internet love scam by a Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin.

Justice Adenike Akinpelu, on Monday, found Oyeyemi guilty of two counts bordering on sex scam preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Oyeyemi, 21, a native of Odo-Owa in the Oke-Ero Local Government Area of Kwara State, was arrested on March 16, 2020, by operatives of the Ilorin zonal office of the EFCC, who acted on an intelligence report.

According to the report, Oyeyemi allegedly posed as a white prostitute to defraud one Wilson, a white man, of $100 in exchange for sex.

He confessed to the crime and was arraigned on November 26, 2020, and pleaded guilty to the charges.

Delivering her judgment, Justice Akinpelu said, "The plea of guilt entered by the defendant is a total admission of the crime."

The judge pronounced Oyeyemi guilty of the charges and sentenced him accordingly.

The judge sentenced him to one year imprisonment on each of the counts; the terms are to run concurrently.

Justice Akinpelu, however, gave the convict an option of N200,000 fine on each of the two counts.

She ordered that the convict's phones and the manager cheque (bank draft) of N80,000, which he brought to the EFCC office, be forfeited to the Federal Government.

I fraudster disappears from custody

Similarly, one Murtala Abdullateef, who defrauded foreigners through Facebook, has been sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment by a Sokoto State High Court.

It was gathered that Abdullateef, while presenting himself as a United States Army General serving in war-torn Syria, hacked into the Facebook accounts of several European women to defraud them.

The EFCC said the convict was arrested alongside six others on May 25, 2021, at Badariya in Birnin Kebbi metropolis by operatives of the Department of State Services for involvement in Internet fraud, adding that the other suspects had been prosecuted and convicted on separate charges.

Abdullateef was arraigned on one count of cheating and he pleaded guilty to the charge.

According to a statement by the EFCC, the defence counsel, Shamsu Dauda, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy on the grounds that his client was a first time offender, who had become remorseful.

Justice Malami Dogondaji convicted and sentenced Abdullateef to 10 years' imprisonment with the option of N200,000 fine.

The charge read, "That you, Murtala Abdullateef, sometime in May 2021 in Sokoto, within the judicial division of the High Court of Justice of Sokoto State, dishonestly hacked into the Facebook accounts of several European women with intent to defraud them of their hard-earned money, wherein you represented yourself to them as a General in the US Army on a peacekeeping mission in Syria, and you thereby attempted to commit the offence of cheating contrary to Section 58 of the Sokoto State Penal Code Law, 2019 and punishable under Section 311 of the same law."