The Minister for Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Mohammed has lost N3million to a car dealer, Ibrahim Takat and a spiritualist, Nakasi Ahmadu who conspired to defraud him.
Takat, who has been arrested by the State Security Service (SSS) and Ahmadu, who is still at large, were said to have cloned the minister’s telephone number and used it to send a text message to his chief of staff, asking him to deposit N3m in a Diamond Bank account, which was withdrawn the same day.
According to the Director of Operations, SSS, FCT Command, Ibrahim Halilu, who paraded Takat on Friday, he explained that the car dealer used the minister’s cloned number to obtain the money on August 8, 2013 at Asokoro, Abuja.
He said, “Takat used the cloned phone number to give instruction to the Chief of Staff to the minister via text message to deposit N3m into his account number 0011141544 with Diamond Bank Plc. The amount was withdrawn the same day by the suspect.”
However, Takat denied knowing anything about the alleged cloning of the minister’s telephone number, adding that the fraud was perpetrated by his friend, Ahmadu, who is on the run. He said Ahmadu used his (Takat) bank account to receive the money and gave him N400,000 in return.
The car dealer explained that he gave his bank account to the spiritualist because he had been his friend for over 20 years.
He said, “Ahmadu is my friend and he lives in Gombe; he asked me to give him my bank account for a business transaction which I obliged because I have known him for about 20 years and he has helped me in the past.
“The money (N3m) was deposited in my account and he withdrew it and gave me N400,000, but I didn’t know the money was criminally obtained.
“If I was involved in the scam, I would not have come to the SSS office when I was invited. I don’t know anything about it.”