A well-known hacker named Onuma Osita has been taken into custody by the Nigeria Police Force. He broke into the Enugu State government’s financial system and embezzled N1,097,700,300 from its funds.
Following a thorough investigation into the cyber theft, the Nigeria Police Force-National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) worked together to make the arrest feasible.
Police spokesperson Olumuyiwa Adejobi revealed during a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday that the $754,977 worth of pilfered money had been successfully recovered and sent back to the state government’s coffers.”
The Enugu State Government reported that Onuma Osita had defrauded the government of over N1 billion in a procurement fraud scheme, and the NPF-NCCC looked into the matter,” Adejobi said. The money has been obtained, and the culprit has been taken into custody. “The suspect was taken into custody, and the amount of N1,097,700,300, or roughly $754,977, was found and given back to the government of Enugu State,” he stated.
“685 devices were recovered, including 467 phones, 137 laptops, 46 routers, four star link, 28 desktops, four servers, and a drone, and 14 land documents were recovered as proceeds of crime.” According to Adejobi, investigators also captured Douglass Victor, a suspected cybercriminal connected to a syndicate that specializes in money laundering, computer-related fraud, identity theft, and business email breach.
He clarified that the organization, purportedly headed by Diepreye Samuel, was active worldwide and used hacked email correspondence to target businesses and people in order to siphon off money for private expenses.
“During interrogation, the suspect confessed to compromising business conversations, diverting funds to their syndicate, and compromising customers’ email addresses and passwords,” Adejobi said.
His Skype account yielded thousands of compromised login credentials and email addresses. The suspect also revealed that the syndicate has members all across the world and conducts business globally.
The members only use Skype for communication and transactions, which makes their operations extremely elusive. The syndicate’s leader and other members who are still at large are being sought for and apprehended, Adejobi continued.