Police arrests 10 empowerment scammers in Aba for duping scores of residents

 November 18, 2018

  

By Ijendu Iheaka  

Abia State Police Commissioner, M r Chris Ezeike on Sunday said the Police has arrested 10 scammers connected with duping scores of Aba residents in the guise to empower them.

Hundreds of  Aba residents were duped in the past two weeks by scammers claiming to be running empowerment programmes which promised participants double the amount of money they give to the scheme.

Ezeike said that in the last two weeks the police in Aba had been inundated with reports of various groups who masquerade as empowerment groups but with the motive of duping people.

He said that following the report of the scam, he had set up a panel to gather complaints of the victims of the crime which was predominantly committed in Aba using the guise of empowerment schemes.

“They are making people pay huge sums of money with the hopes that in less than weeks, the interest will double and triple and of course many people have fallen prey to this suspected scam.

“As at Friday when I set up this panel, we were suspecting that over 1000 persons have been defrauded but the preliminary reports I received from the panel is even more worrisome.

“I think that number is just a sheer minimal. Ten suspects are in custody.

“We are working hard so that from tomorrow we should be dialoguing with part of the judiciary to ensure that if we need to have some funds warehoused on some accounts, we will do so.

“I wish to use this opportunity to alert people of Abia particularly Aba and its environments to be wary of unauthorized financial institutions and empowerment units they patronize.

“There is no free launch anywhere in the world”, Ezeike said.

He said that the police have discovered that the ten suspects arrested in connections with the empowerment scam tried their hands on money doubling which is a crime.

 He said that money-doubling metamorphoses into conspiracy, forgery, fraud, obtaining through false pretences, operation of illegal financial houses and outright stealing.

The Police commissioner therefore called on victims of the crime to meet the panel members at Area Commander’s office in Aba to document their experiences and enable the police know where they fall.

“If any security agent be it a policemen or a front tells you to pay so, so and so amount of money, so that so, so and so can be given toyou, ignore such persons because they are also conspirators in this large scale fraud that has befallen our people”, he warned.