Detectives at the Anti-fraud Unit of the Force Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Department, Alagbon Close, Lagos, have been uncovered a cell of international fraudsters fleecing depositors of millions of dollars at banks across the world at a hideout in Ajah area of Lagos.

The cell targeting accounts with big limits of between one and five million dollars, the fraudsters, allegedly led by one Remijus Ekpe, were found to have swept huge sums from depositors’ funds using cloned websites of the Central Bank of Nigeria, United Bank for Africa, Union Bank, the International Monetary Fund and those of American financial institutions including Chase Bank, USAA, and Wells Fargo & Company.

The Detectives were led by their Commissioner of Police, Dan Okoro, an officer with a reputation for cracking hard cases including murder and financial fraud.

According to Okoro, the fraudsters were working with insiders at the banks to obtain account and credit card details to defraud their victims, saying through what they called a coded advanced undercover investigation and high-tech forensic, the police found that the fraudsters targeted one hundred and thirty million dollars in a particular bank account after receiving information from insiders at the bank.

Okoro said the frauds were going on and the banks were not informing the public, the customers, and innocent depositors, saying in one instance, a victim was fleeced of one million dollars which members of the syndicate shared using what they called 40-20-20-20 formula.

More than 50 audio recordings and videos have been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones, along with loads of forged documents of IMF, CBN, UBA; approvals from the Federal High Court, Abuja Division, and documents bearing the signature of a former President of Nigeria used in defrauding victims some years back.

Hoping to pave the way for further development of police detectives at FCIID to effectively combat cyber-criminals the commissioner of police and his men paid a visit to Cybersoc, a Lekki-based incident response and security services firm with capacity for thorough investigation and deterrence of cyber-criminals involved in fraud and identity theft with hacking or phishing.

The team of detectives were received by the Managing Director of Cybersoc, David Dan, who told the visiting detectives that the risk of cyber attacks would always be there, as he urged that Nigerians should take action, build knowledge and capacity.

After a tour of the firm, Okoro thanked Dan on behalf of the Inspector General of Police. He described the visit as a huge educational process.

Speaking during the visit, the Chairman of CBC EMEA, a leading Technology and ICT player in Africa specializing in integrating ICT Systems and providing technology solutions, Gbade Alabi, said, “The war is not the physical war anymore; it’s the cyber-war.”

Okoro said, “The Anti-fraud unit of the Force CID has unravelled the circumstances surrounding fake bank documents, corporate bodies documents, Federal High Court documents, CBN documents, individual and multi-national documents, that a group of syndicates have been circulating to members of the public and multi-nationals on-shore, off-shore, and this group of persons dwell in areas of forging these documents and circulating.

People should be wary of these documents – clearance documents, and final payment documents from the banks… These documents that are purported to be genuine documents are being issued out to the members of the public.