Justice Mahmud Abdulgafar of the Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin on Friday, sentenced a 20-year-old man, Fawas Oyelowo, to 12 months’ imprisonment for offences bordering on cybercrime.
The convict, who hailed from the Atiba Local Government Area of Oyo State, was prosecuted on two counts by the Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Oyelowo, among other things, claimed to be a white female professional prostitute practising in the United States of America.
According to the prosecution, the defendant disguised to swindle his unsuspecting victims out of various sums before the long arm of the law caught up with him.
The charges read in part, “That you, Oyelowo Mayowa Fawas, sometime between June 2020 and June 2021 in Ilorin, Kwara State, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did knowingly have under your control the sum of N57,837,710 paid into your Access Bank account number 0804708906, reasonably suspected to have been unlawfully obtained, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 319A of the Penal Code.”
The defendant pleaded guilty when the two counts were read to him.
Following his plea, counsel for the EFCC, Innocent Mbachie, called a witness, Udo Iniubong, an operative of the agency, to review the facts of the case.
The witness told the court how credible intelligence led to the arrest of the defendant in Malete, in the Moro LGA of Kwara State.
The statements of the defendant, iPhones and a laptop recovered from him at the point of arrest were tendered and admitted in evidence.
In his judgment, Justice Abdulgafar found Oyelowo guilty of the two counts and sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment on each count with a fine option of N100,000 on each count.
The judge also ordered that the phones and the laptop used to perpetrate the crime and the sum of $700 raised as restitution by the convict be forfeited to the Federal Government.
