Lagos State Police Command has arrested a six-man syndicate that specialised in robbing Lagosians of their mobile phones and turning over its SIM Cards to hackers who get hold of the account details of its owners in order to steal their funds.

Parading the group on Tuesday, the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Imohimi Edgal, disclosed that the syndicate comprised of three splinter groups visiting choice locations in the State to rob members of the public of their phones.

He stated that six suspects have been arrested by the Decoy Team of Rapid Response Squad of the Command in relation to the fraud, noting that after robbing people of their phones, the group would hand over the SIMs to another set of people that would through special computer apps get the bank account details of the owners.

Edgal added that the account balance of the owner of the stolen SIM card is subsequently transferred to different accounts owned by another set of suspects.

According to the Commissioner, Nwanze Ifeanyi (27), Martins Achi (27) and Solomon Dike (31) rob people of their phones and flee the scene on a motorcycle.

He stated that 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 are used to determine the account balance.

He revealed that the activities of the group were brought to the attention of the Decoy Team of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) when they stole the phone of one Yinka at a birthday party in Egbeda area.

Exhibits recovered from the gang included two laptops and 10 SIM cards among other things.

•Source: lagosstate.gov.ng

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