***Allegedly Swindles Access Bank’s Herbert Wigwe, Others
When the internet came into existence, many young entrepreneurs took advantage of the social media platforms to make a living for themselves. Some unscrupulous ones, however, explored all the illegitimate avenues to defraud people.
One of such young men allegedly using the social media against its primary purpose is Babatunde Oyebode, a secondary school drop-out, who publishes an online magazine known as naijagistlive.com.
At present, Oyebode is being interrogated by the police at the Special Fraud Intelligence Unit(SFIU), Ikoyi-Lagos.
A source described Oyebode as a cool looking young man with a heart of steel. The source continues “Oyebode uses his website to harass, intimidate as well as blackmail people, and collecting money from them in foreign and local currencies through Paypal, so that it will not be easy for him to be traced through regular banks, or get arrested”
His mode of operation, according to police source is that, Oyebode uploads fictitious and damaging stories of a prominent person on his website.
After sometime, he uses proxies, or phone contacts to get the attention of the victim(s), and give them conditions that they must pay a certain amount of money before the stories can be removed from the site.
And most personalities who know the consequence of such stories, which may affect their business or personal life will decide to part with cash in order to save their reputation.
According to the source, Oyebode once collected 7,000pounds from Access Bank’s MD, Herbert Wigwe. Nana, wife of billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola was also said to have coughed out US$5,0000 to remove a damaging but false story from his site. It was also learnt that Aliko Dangote, Musa Danjuma, Dapo Jojo Balogun, Wale Tinubu and others have been a victim at one time or the other.
The music stopped playing for Oyebode when several reports got to the police, and they swung into action. He was arrested at a remote part of Festac Town where he lives. Laptops, mobile phones, and about 20bank accounts were also discovered and traced to him. Other evidence of PayPal transactions were also discovered, and it was learnt that Oyebode had two other members in his blackmail gang.
While one of the members is on the run, the only female member of the group, we were reliably informed, lives in Europe and also operates another website alongside the one they use to ply their blackmail trade.
Oyebode is still being interrogated,and has been co-operating with the police, while some of the victims are also following up with the case to make sure that they get justice.
Nasty nasty vile
Kuntafatic