Operatives of the Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State police command have arrested a man they said specializes in recharging call credit from other people’s bank accounts.
The suspect, Ebenezer Oyeneye, a 50-year-old truck driver, resides at 4, Moyinoluwa Avenue, Ijoko Lemode, Ogun State.
The police at the Aguda divisional headquarters in Surulere, Lagos, said a woman, who wished to remain anonymous, had reported that an unknown person has been recharging his/her phone call credit from her bank account at one of the new generation commercial banks in the country since July 2016.
The victim was said to have complained about the frequency and sum of money which the suspect had withdrawn from her bank account through purchasing a credit “top up” debited from her account.
According to the victim, the fraud began on July 4, 2016 after she received a debit alert from her bank that she had recharged a sum of N1,000 call credit for her phone line, when she hadn’t sent such a command or initiated such transaction.
“I was amazed when my financial institution notified me of a debit on my bank account. The same thing continued for about 11 months,” she was quoted to have said.
After the woman filed the case at the Aguda divisional headquarters, it was transferred to the RRS for indepth investigation. This led to the arrest of the suspect.
When Oyeneye was questioned, he confessed he thought up the idea in July 2016 with nothing to live on and maintain his family needs after the truck he was driving was retrieved from him by the owner due to a misunderstanding.
He said he then thought he had found a means of livelihood after he was credited with a recharge sum of N1,000 while trying to recharge his phone line with a short code.
“I tried it the following day and was issued with a recharge credit of N3,000. So I continued day in, day out, for weeks and months. I became so overwhelmed by the value of my call credit balance and immediately resorted to selling my loot to people around me for months before I was blocked.
“The maximum I can recharge from the account is N3,000 per day because my network provider restricted me to a daily top-up of the said amount. I would then sell the recharge credit and collect physical cash from my customers,” he said.
The suspect, who the police described as a member of a popular pentecostal church in Otta, Ogun State, confessed to have been sharing his loot with his wife and calling his mistresses as a big man with so much call credit.
When told the amount he had recharged within 11 months of his escapade, Oyeneye said he knew he would have recharged up to the said amount (N400, 000) because he was always using the illegal platform both to enrich himself and making calls ceaselessly.
Commenting on the development, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Assistant Superintendent of Police Olarinde Famous-Cole, advised members of the public to seek professional advice from their financial institutions before connecting their bank accounts to any online transaction, and to report immediately to the police and any other relevant authorities anytime they observe any strange transaction on their bank accounts.
