The Kaduna zonal office of EFCC arraigned some hackers before Justice Mohammed Tukur, in Kaduna’s State High Court on Wednesday. The suspects, namely, Adefila Taofile Kayode, Mmadu Mathew, Oche Ogenyi, and Rabiu Aliko Lawal, were accused of conspiring and stealing four hundred and sixty-six million naira (466,000,000) by hacking into a particular bank Polaris bank account.
Before the arrest, Polaris bank is said to have written a petition to the anti-graft agency, stating that the culprits hacked into their bank’s mobile app and fraudulently added more than four hundred and sixty-five million to an existing account which had just seven hundred and eighty-one thousand (781,000) initially.
A statement on the charges against them reads: “That you Bashir Abdullahi Mohammed, Oche Ogenyi, Adefila Taofile Kayode, Rabiu Aliko Lawal, Mmadu Mathew Onyekachi, and others now at large, sometime in 2018 in Kaduna within the Judicial Division of the High Court, did conspire amongst yourselves to commit theft of the sum of N466 million and you thereby committed an offense contrary to 58(1) of the Penal Code Law Kaduna State 2017 and punishable under Section 59(1) of the same Law”.
The suspects immediately claimed they were not guilty of the charges, hence, the prosecutor, Barrister Onyeka Ekweozor, demanded a date to commence their trial and pleaded that they should be kept behind bars until then.
He said, “The defendants have separate charges before a Federal High Court pending arraignment, and remanding them in prison custody will make it difficult for the prosecution to arraign them.”
The lawyers representing the accused persons, A. Ashat and Sylvester Ogbelu, filed bail applications for their clients. But after some arguments between them and the prosecuting counsel, justice Tukur ordered that the four suspects should be in EFCC’s custody while they wait for the court’s ruling on the bail applications.
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