SS2 dropout, 5 others nabbed for stealing, hacking SIM cards to transfer funds

The police in Lagos State have arrested a six-man syndicate  allegedly specialised in robbing people of their mobile phones and hacking bank accounts through the SIMs to steal the victims’ money. The Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, said the syndicate comprised of three splinter groups visiting choice locations in the state to rob members of […]

The police in Lagos State have arrested a six-man syndicate  allegedly specialised in robbing people of their mobile phones and hacking bank accounts through the SIMs to steal the victims’ money.

The Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, said the syndicate comprised of three splinter groups visiting choice locations in the state to rob members of the public of their phones.

He said one of the groups, after stealing the phone, would hand over the SIM to another group that would through special computer applications get the bank account details of the owner and thereafter get the account’s balance.

Edgal added that the balance of the account is now transferred into different accounts sourced by another set of suspects.

He said Nwanze Ifeanyi (27), Martins Achi (27) and Solomon Dike (31) robbed people of their phones and fled the scene on motorcycles.

He said an SS2 dropout, Muritala Mohammed (28) a.k.a Swallow, through computer apps, retrieved the names, bank details of the original owner of the SIM, including BVN, adding that the recovered details were used to determine the account’s balance.

“Money in the account is transferred into different accounts sourced by the third group involving Shamson Mustapha (25) and Ali Hassan (27),” Edgal added.

He said investigation started on the suspects when one Yinka reported that her phone was stolen at a party and N1.1m was subsequently transferred from her account. The suspected hacker, Muhammed, said he started hacking into bank accounts of people in June 2017.

“My first hit was N20,000 and the bank accounts that I hacked are in UBA, GTB and Access bank. All the SIMs that I have worked on should be up to 47”, he said.