Police warn against giving account details to strangers

The Abia State Police Command has warned members of the public against sending their bank details to phone numbers of unknown people claiming to be account officers from their banks to avoid falling victim to fraudsters.

The state Police Commissioner, Leye Oyebade, gave the warning while parading some suspects last week.

According to him, police investigation revealed that a suspect arrested in connection with a fraud case did a ‘welcome back’ of his victim’s phone number and got relevant information with which he accessed his victim’s account online and diverted huge sum of amount from it.

According to Oyebade, the arrest of the suspect was as a result of the complaint lodged by the victim.

The suspect (name withheld), however, denied knowledge of the crime during an interview with Metro, saying he only gave his account number and ATM card with the pin code to one Mrs Eziulo (other name withheld), a co- teacher in a school at Aguda, Surulere, Lagos State, to enable her pay him the money she owed him.

He said: “I don’t know anything about this fraud. What happened was that I gave my account number and the ATM card to my friend and colleague to enable her get money from her brother and pay me the money I lent her to pay her house rent earlier, because she told me that her account had a problem.

“I thought she was genuine because as teachers, we teach morals. I didn’t know that she had another ulterior motive with her husband to use my account to defraud people of their money. Later, I got an alert of the sum of N400,000 that was transferred to my account and it was withdrawn immediately.

“When I called her to find out why she didn’t give me the money she owed me, she said she will give me the money in school. It was in the process that I was arrested by the police.”