EFCC Nabs Man for Impersonating Lawmaker

Lawrence Henry Eromosele, paraded by the EFCC at the Commission's Hqtrs recently for identity theft via internet phishing

Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, have arrested a cyber crime suspect while attempting to travel with the identity of a federal lawmaker in Lagos.

The suspect, Lawrence Henry Eromosele was arrested at the Murtala Mohammed International airport, ikeja Lagos when attempting to board a United Emirate Airline flight to Dubai.

The culprit, a light complexioned youngman who hails from Edo State had hacked the e-mail address of Hon. Hamisu Shira from where he got the lawmaker’s travel agent contact details in Dubai. He soon presented himself as the lawmaker to the travel agency with an instruction that they send him an Emirate Airline business class ticket to travel to Dubai. The agency had in turn requested him to send a copy of his international passport.

However, upon presenting his passport which is suspected to have been fraudulently acquired as it bears the name of the lawmaker but has the picture of the culprit, the travel agent who suspected foul play contacted the lawmaker who thereafter reported the matter to EFCC. The EFCC operatives swiftly swung into action which culminated in the arrest of the culprit as he was about to board the flight to Dubai on Friday ,6 February, 2009 at about 2.30pm.

Responding to questions from journalists at a press conference where he was paraded, Eromosele claimed that he was a footballer based in Ivory Coast and that a certain John who wanted to help him secure a professional football contract oversea gave him the passport. His defence soon turned out to be tissues of lies as he could not sustain his claim before journalists who sought to know more about John and how he acquired the international passport.

While parading the suspect on Wednesday 11 February in Abuja, the Commission says it has become imperative to alert unsuspecting members of the public of the new trend in cyber crime called phishing as scammers seem to have changed their tactic from scam letter writing. According to the Commission’s spokesman, fraudsters have now resorted to phishing through which they hack into people’s bank accounts and other personal data to steal identities and commit fraud with it

“The commission therefore wishes to alert members of the public of this trend and equally warn them not to respond to any enquiries asking them to give certain information to update their banking details or electronic card data. This is simply their ploy to have needed information to hack into people’s bank accounts.”