Two persons – Arewa Adekunle (aka Barrister Tania Rivera) and Kadiri Yusuf Kayode – were on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, found guilty and sentenced to jail terms in offences filed against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibadan zonal office.
The duo respectively bagged six months and four months imprisonment before Justices Joyce Abdulmalik and P. I. Ajoku of the Federal High Court of the Ibadan Judicial Division.
The convicts had pleaded guilty to the separate one-count amended charges preferred against them by the EFCC which were products of the plea bargain proposed by their lawyers and agreed to by the commission.
The charges border on fraud and fraudulent impersonation.
Arewa, an Ordinary National Diploma (OND) holder, was charged with fraudulent impersonation by representing himself to be Barrister Tania Rivera with email address barristertanviarivera@gmail.com and thereby committing an offense contrary to Section 22(2) and punishable under Section 22(2)(b)(iv) of the cyber crimes Probition, Prevention etc) Act,2015.
For Kadiri, also a graduate of Banking and Finance from the University of Ado Ekiti, the offence was that he ‘sometime in 2018, at Elebu, within the jurisdiction of the Honorable Court, fraudulently impersonated one Justin’s Lizzy’.
The convict had used his email: justinalizzy@gmail.com to send messages to one shahzad lqbal ‘in order to confer financial gains’ to himself, thereby committing an offence contrary to Section 22 (3) (b) and punishable under Section 22(4) of the Cyber Crimes (Prohibition, Prevention etc) Act 2015.
During the sessions, the EFCC’s counsel in the respective cases, Abdulrasheed Suleman and Oyelakin Oyediran, urged the courts to accept the plea bargain agreement and convict the duo accordingly.
Apart from bagging a jail term, Arewa was said to have already refunded the sum of $200 USD (Two Hundred United States American Dollars) as restitution to the victim of his fraud. He will also forfeit his HP Laptop and iPhone 6s to the federal government.
In the same vein, in addition to his sentencing, Alao will restitute the sum of $200 USD (Two Hundred United States of American Dollars) to his victim.
The presiding judge also ordered that he forfeits his HP Laptop, Two Tecno J8 Mobile Phone, One Samsung J4 Mobile Phone, One HSDPA modem and One LED HD Television set to the Federal Government of Nigeria, being part of the benefit he derived from his fraudulent act.