Arrested Dollar fraudsters reveal how they succeeded in duping their victims

wo suspects have been arrested for duping people with fake Dollars and they opened up about how they carry out their operations.

George Osagie, 51 and Makinde Kudu, 28, were arrested in a popular hotel in Lagos and paraded at the State Command. Exhibits recovered from them, which includes the fake dollars they had used in their operations, were also displayed as they were paraded.

They confessed that they were trained as fraudsters and have duped many people of millions of Naira with fake Dollar, P.M Express reports. They further said that they are able to dupe victims by stirring up the greed in them. Once they are able to make prospective victims greedy, they become easy preys. They said that some of the victims believed that they can double their money after they were shown Dollars.

Parading the suspects at the State Command, Ikeja, Lagos, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Imohimi Edgal, said that on June 28, 2018, the police received information from members of the public that there were some group of persons going around the metropolis defrauding innocent people through magical means. Based on the information, operatives from FSARS, Ikeja, and the Command swung into action and arrested them at Nglasia Hotel, Ilasa, Lagos. He said that they were searched and in the process some exhibits were recovered from them which included gallons of liquid label, cash tank of US dollars suspected to be fake and platinum brokers international incorporation documents.

CP Edgal said that during interrogation, they confessed that it was their means of livelihood and they had duped many people because of their greed. 

He said that on further investigation, the police discovered that the gang had duped one Victoria Awoniyi of the sum of N5m, Taiwo Kayode lost N300,000 to the fraudsters, Adebisi Adebayo lost N500,000, and many other victims lost money too. The police boss said that investigations are still ongoing with the aim of arresting other members of the gang for prosecution.

APC dissociates self from National Assembly siege

The leadership of the All Progressives Congress has distanced itself from today's invasion of the National assembly by DSS officials.

A statement from Yekini Nabena, the acting National Publicity Secretary of the party, said the party is monitoring the development at the National Assembly like every other concerned Nigerian. He denied allegations that the party National chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, had a link to the development at the National Assembly complex.

The statement read:

“Our attention has been drawn to mischievous attempts in some partisan quarters to link Tuesday’s developments in the National Assembly to the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.

“While the Party is monitoring the developments in the National Assembly like every other concerned Nigerian and stakeholder, there is absolutely no basis for all the false allegations and attempt to blame the APC National Chairman for the development there. It is strictly a legislative matter.”

Breaking: DSS officials take over National Assembly

DSS officials have taken over the National Assembly, preventing lawmakers from having access into the National Assembly.

The presidency has been appealing to the National Assembly to reconvene to attend to pressing issues that need their attention, particularly the  2018 supplementary budget and virement request.

The lawmakers went on a recess that would lapse at the end of September after 15 senators including Dino Melaye defected from APC to PDP. See photos and videos from the National Assembly complex below.

Nigerian musician Davido's security punches reporter

New York, July 27, 2018-- Nigerian musician Davido should hold accountable those responsible for the assault of Adekanmbi Damilola, CEO of the online entertainment news platform NoStoryTV, by a member of his private security team and ensure journalists can safely cover his events, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Damilola, who also reports for the Lagos-based NoStoryTV, told CPJ he was punched in the face by a security guard working for Davido Adeleke, better known by his stage name Davido, outside the artists' tent during a July 21 concert in Nigeria's southwestern Ibadan city. 

The journalist told CPJ that he approached Davido's security guard to request an interview with the musician and the guard told Damilola that cameras, which Damilola had with him, were not allowed inside. Damilola said he dropped off the camera and returned to request access again. The bouncer then punched Damilola, according to the journalist and Oduwole Tobi, the editor-in-chief of entertainment news outlet Cold Magazine who goes by "Brown." 

Tobi, who said he saw the altercation and wrote about it on Instagram, told CPJ that the security guard punched Damilola on the ground for two or three minutes. CPJ was unable to verify independently the duration of the assault on Damilola.

Video footage later appeared on an Instagram account called instablog9ja that showed Damilola lying disheveled on his back wearing a NoStoryTV shirt with blood on his face. Tobi denied posting the video and Damilola also told CPJ he did not know who posted the video. 

The journalist said he remembers being punched and then woke up in Ibadan's University College Hospital. Damilola told CPJ on July 25 that his eyes were swollen after being punched and he still had pain in his teeth and gums. 

The journalist said he did not file a police report about the incident because he does not live in Ibadan and left after he was released from the hospital. 

"Violence against journalists under any circumstances is totally unacceptable," Angela Quintal, CPJ's Africa program coordinator, said from Harare. "Davido and his team must act to ensure press covering their events are able to do their work without fear of assault." 

Damilola's drone, which he was carrying at the time of the attack and which had a camera attached to it, was also damaged in the altercation, according to the journalist and a July 24 post on NoStoryTV's Instagram. 

Damilola said that prior to Davido's arrival he had already conducted several interviews with other artists in the musicians' tent, also referred to as the green room, and that he and four other NoStoryTV team members were given access tags that allowed them into the artists' area. 

Rotimi Ige Roy, media director of Ibadan Countdown, the entertainment company that helped organize and host the Ibadan concert, told CPJ on July 26 and 27 that the tags given to the NoStoryTV team only granted them official access to the VIP area and the stage, not the green room, and denied that Damilola's equipment was damaged. 

Roy said that he did not see the altercation directly, though "people around him" said that Davido's guard punched Damilola in response to a first punch thrown by the journalist and that the guard did not continuously punch the journalist. The media director also said that he transported Damilola to the hospital. 

A statement from Ibadan Countdown, published by the privately owned Nigerian newspaper Punch on July 24, denied claims that a reporter was "manhandled by security operatives" at the concert and claimed the reports of violence were a "calculated attempt to bring the event into disrepute." 

CPJ's efforts to contact Davido and members of his team-- including emails to the addresses listed on his website's contact page, direct messages to Davido Adeleke's personal Instagram account and the Instagram account of sirbanko, president of the Davido Music Worldwide (DMW) company, and calls to the number listed on the website of Davido's record label, HKN Music-- received no response.

Godswill Akpabio meets president Buhari in London ahead of rumoured defection

There have been rumours that former Akwa Ibom state governor Godswill Akpabio is set to dump the PDP for APC. He met with President Buhari in London ahead of the alleged defection.

'We have nothing but pity for APC and their desperation in wooing our members' - PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has mocked the Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC), as shameless, despicable and hypocritical, for attempting to woo PDP members into its 'now discredited and famished fold'.  

PDP describes the move in a statement signed by its national publicity secretary Kola Ologbodiyan 'as a failed antic of an apprehended and deflated felon who, in his immoral proclivity, attempts futilely to pull off one last survival stunt before facing the gallows, or more so, a mortally wounded snake furtively seeking for one last bite before its inevitable painful death'. 

The statement also says, 'PDP has nothing but pity for the APC, who, in its blind desperation, cannot see that the train has since left the station and that no body, no matter the lure, abandons a cruising liner, which the PDP now represents, to jump into a sinking ship with a disoriented captain which the APC has become. Indeed, no one, no matter the enticement, runs into a collapsing building from where terrified, wounded and traumatized people are already taking flight for their dear lives'. 

Nigerians can now see the shameless hypocrisy of the APC, which is now going about, cap in hand, to beg the same persons it haunted as corrupt and evil, seeing that it has been overrun by the tides. Having failed to cow such persons through threats, media trials, trumped up corruption charges and raw violence, the APC is now seeking to ensnare them with promises of political opportunities it no longer has control over.

The dilapidated APC, by now, ought to have known that no Nigerian will again fall for its gimmick of false promises and subject him or herself to the prison yard democracy, that it offers. We therefore counsel the APC to leave our members alone and stop acting like that evil character who roams about seeking for whom to devour or drag along into the pit, knowing that his time is short.

The APC should quit its antics and find an abandoned cave of history to lick its wounds, having squandered the goodwill given to it by Nigerians in 2015. The eclipsing APC must know that Nigerians have had enough of its lies, deception, propaganda, contrivances, beguilements and are now resolute in their iron-cast determination to rally on the platform of the repositioned PDP to rescue our nation from the curse which the APC has come to represent in the last three years.