EFCC parades 10 suspected Yahoo boys for posing as U.S. soldiers to defraud Americans

Police arrest 120 cult members in Benue
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has paraded 10 suspects who disguised as American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. According to the anti-graft agency, the suspects allegedly defrauded some American citizens by impersonating as their soldiers.

The South-south Zonal Coordinator of EFCC, Naghe Obono Itam, while parading the suspects at the commission’s office in Port Harcourt, disclosed that the suspects appealed to Americans to support them with donations. He said that the suspects used iTunes to extort money from their victims.

According to him, “we have noticed that within the last three months, we have the issue of yahoo yahoo boys who appeared to have resurfaced again. I am glad to say that with the partnership of the Federal SARS, we were able to apprehend some of them.

“The most interesting aspect of it is that we still find people that fall prey to this scam. We have Nigerians who pretended that they are American soldiers that came from Afghanistan and were talking to the Americans as if they are Americans soliciting for funds.

“They extort money from them through i-Tunes, estimated at $100. They find it difficult to collect the money in Nigeria but they collect iTunes from them and sell it online. We have four of them in our custody. We still have others who pretended to be American soldiers and were talking to their victims that there were lots of mineral deposits such as gold.

“They contact people online in China asking them to come and buy the mineral deposits. In Nigerian they collect N5,000 each from the unsuspecting public, which they receive through banks.”

He called on Nigerians to be wary of those they give their account numbers, adding that the commission has made recovery both in cash and forfeitures of N1,674,891,899, $552,368 and 5,225 euros, while it secured 33 convictions.

Meanwhile, ahead of Christmas, the police in Benue State have arrested 120 suspected cultists in Otukpo, Makurdi and other parts of the state.

The state Commissioner of Police, Ene Okon, who made the revelation to journalists in Makurdi yesterday said the suspects were arrested by the command’s Anti-Cult unit, which was formed to tackle the rising cases of cultism in the state and other crimes.

CP Okon explained that of the 120 suspected cultists that were arrested, 78 were charged to court and remanded in prison custody while 22 others who were found to be innocent were released unconditionally and five are still undergoing interrogation.

Okon added that 15 suspected cultists were also arrested in Makurdi on Wednesday night this week. Some of the suspects who spoke with The Guardian including Godwin Akaa, Jonathan Koriyo, Suleiman Stephen and Ukeyima Malu, confessed to the various crimes but claimed that they were first offenders.