Lagos businessman docked over $1.8 million scam

On March 25, 2009, Justice J.E. Oyefeso of Ikeja High Court, Lagos will decide whether an accused person, Chief Collins Oyejiaka, a Lagos businessman, who is standing trial in an advance fee fraud case should be admitted to bail.

  The 49- year old indigene of Imo state was arraigned last week by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on four-count charge of obtaining money under false pretence. Collins Oyejiaka and  C.B Trust Limited were alleged to have on the 7th  and 16th  of August 1996 fraudulently obtained the sums of $5000 and $57,000 from Mr. Carle Vance of Oxford, Ohio, USA by falsely representing the sum to be the cost of remittance of funds for an oil allocation contract  from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

 The accused pleaded not guilty to the charges and the trial Judge ordered that he be remanded in Kirikiri Maximum prisons till March 25, 2009 when she will rule on his bail application.

 The accused was arrested by EFCC on the strength of a petition from the victim. The complainant alleged that Oyejiaka and others still at large, defrauded him to the tune of $1,813,728.00 over a period of time through wire/ money transfers. He explained that the money was transferred in 16 different transactions to the syndicate’s accounts in at least seven countries: Nigeria, Switzerland, Benin Republic, Dubai, Belgium, Hong Kong and Japan.

The complainant who is said to be willing to come to Nigeria to give evidence against the accused person recalls that in October 1995, he was contacted by a Chief E.D. Akan, who claimed to be a Director of NNPC. The said Akan introduced two other persons to him: one Emeka Etiaba, as his friend and confidant, and Dr. Edward Kathy as Assistant Internal Remittance Director at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN. He said that in the course of their discussion on telephone, they made him believe that he could be supplied with Nigeria’s crude oil and they sent him several fake documents to back up their claim. They claimed these documents purportedly emanated from various government institutions and banks in Nigeria and abroad.

The victim swallowed the bait and started transferring money to them in Nigeria and abroad in respect of the transaction. He met members of the syndicate in Washington, USA; Accra, Ghana; London, UK and Brussels, Belgium.  All these went on for about 10 years and after spending almost two million dollars without receiving any crude oil supply, it dawned on him that he had been duped. He subsequently petitioned EFCC.