6-man gang in police nest for robbing victims of phones, hacking into account details

Six suspects who specialised in transferring funds using SIM cards of stolen phones have been arrested by the Lagos State Police Command.

The gang, police say, would rob victims of their mobile phones and hand over the SIM cards to hackers.

The hackers would in turn get hold of the account details of owners and transfer their account balances through special computer apps.

The group was paraded today by the state Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal.

Edgal said the syndicate comprised of three splinter groups who visit choice locations in the state to rob members of the public of their phones.

The suspects, Nwanze Ifeanyi (27), Martins Achi (27) and Solomon Dike (31) allegedly rob people of their phones and flee the scene on motorcycle.

While Muritala Mohammed (28) a.k.a Swallow, through computer apps, retrieves the names, bank details of the original owner of the SIM, including BVN. The recovered details are used to determine the account balance.

The money is then transferred into different accounts sourced by the third group involving Shamson Mustapha (25) and Ali Hassan (27).

The group’s chain of activities had been brought to the attention of the RRS when a phone belonging to one Yinka was stolen at a birthday party in Egbeda area.

The syndicate allegedly transferred a sum of N1,153,000 from Yinka’s account.

The victim only got to know of the transactions when she inserted the replaced SIM into a new phone.

One of the suspects, Muhammed, an SS2 drop out of Ojo High Secondary School, Lagos, said he started hacking into bank accounts of people in June 2017.

“My first hit was N20k. All the SIMs that I have worked on should be up to 47”, he said.