The Anambra state police command has warned residents to be wary of activities of one-chance robbery syndicate and fraudsters operating in Awka, the state capital and other parts of the state.
The command said in a statement through its spokesman, SP Haruna Mohammed, that it had received intelligence reports that the syndicates have devised new methods of dispossessing innocent citizens of their hard earned money and other belongings.
The statement reads in part: “These syndicates migrate from one place to another with same method of stealing or defrauding their unsuspecting victims. Just recently in Awka, a lady whose video went viral on the social media, was allegedly lured by some hoodlums inside “jeep” under false pretense that they were looking for a place and lost bearing. As soon as the lady entered the car, she allegedly loss her senses only to realise later when she regained consciousness that all her money and other valuables were carted away by the syndicate.
“Credible information also revealed that another syndicate have devised a method of assessing their victims’ bank accounts through stolen phones or lost ATM cards.”
It would be recalled that the state police command had issued similar alert in September, 2018, where fraudsters disguised as CBN staff in charge of all bank transactions, which is non existent, and placed phone calls to their targets whose bio-data were downloaded, either through Facebook or other social media platforms, and then, demand from them their date of birth or biometric verification numbers (BVN) in order to gain access to their targets’ account numbers and subsequently, transfer all the money into another account through electronic means.
According to the police spokesman, such unwholesome practices are usually perpetrated by persons, who instead of channelling their talents into legitimate means of attaining better living conditions in conformity with acceptable norms in the society, resort to criminal acts in order to get rich quickly and by all means.
“Consequently, the public are enjoined to be wary of this new pattern of crime and immediately report suspicious persons or stolen phones/ATM cards to the nearest police stations and their individual banks to deactivate their accounts. The public should also refrain from availing their personal information, particularly date of birth or biometric identification numbers (BVN) to unauthorised persons, in order not to fall victim of such syndicates.”
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