Dr Vic-Nnamdi Ronnie, Professor of Pastoral Care and Counselling at the South Carolina Christian University, has said that his career and reputation is under serious threat by the activities of Internet hackers.

The Lagos-born professor – who has been on a long sabbatical due to the magnitude of research and investigation involved in what he described as “God-assigned expose of the activities of the marine kingdom” – disclosed this in a statement over the weekend.

Ronnie, author of the multiple-volume first-of-its-kind deliverance book, Overcoming the Queen of the Coast, disclosed that he had reported the menace to the police earlier. He alerted relevant government agencies and the public on the advanced method of these cyber criminals who he said has made life miserable for him because, “they threaten my professional reputation garnered through decades of hard work in Christian counselling/ pastoral care and academic enquiry as an author-in-residence.”

Continuing, he said: “For the past few months, it came to my attention that my social media account had been hacked, unnoticed; numerous e-mails and SMS were being sent by the scammers to solicit for money, which did not emanate from me.

“My social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, including e-mail addresses – were hacked. Telephone lines were duplicated and replicated, unnoticed. These gave unlimited access to the scammers, as they might have used this identity theft to defraud other innocent people.”

The best-selling author reputed as Africa’s leading deliverance author/minister, regretted that

even though he operates no online foreign account(s) to warrant this type of infraction, “they dubiously got my pictures from the Internet and used it to open Internet accounts.”

He cautioned: “I want to use this opportunity to inform the general public to beware and be at alert so as to protect, as well as safeguard, themselves from these dare-devil cyber criminals from using my identity to defraud people online. It is no longer news that WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps are hackable.

“Please be warned: don’t make any form of payment transfer to any account seeking such from you via SMS or e-mail without verifying the authenticity of such.”

Prof Ronnie noted that much as he has notified the police, “I have taken preventive measures against this heist by having my official web-portal, blogs and social media accounts secured,” adding:

“Video calls via Zoom and Skype are still very efficient methods to verify people’s identity; please make use of it. I will soon be running weekly group meeting via Zoom and Skype. Video group link for the meeting will be broadcasted at the appropriate time. Please verify all contact details and information from my web-portal www.profvicronnie.com from time to time.”

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