Justice Sikiru Oyinloye of the Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin on Friday sentenced a final year student of Ekiti State University, EKSU, Ado Ekiti, Adeyemi Kehinde and a 21-year-old student of the Kwara State University, KWASU, Molete, Oladosu Olakunmi Olalekan, to various prison jail terms, having found them guilty of offences bordering on cybercrime.
The two convicts were arraigned on separate charges today by the Ilorin Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
Adeyemi, also known as ‘Queen Elizabeth’ was charged on one count, while Oladosu was prosecuted on three counts.
Particulars of the charge against Adeyemi read: “That you, Adeyemi Kehinde (a.k.a Queen Elizabeth) sometime in February, 2020 or thereabout at Ilorin, Kwara State within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court dishonestly induced one Miller, a white man to send you gift card worth the sum of $400 US Dollars when you knowingly pretended and represented yourself to be a white lady called Queen Elizabeth Toha who was in love with him which representation you knew to be false as it is contained in your Google voice and Google Hangout which are linked to your gmail account: queentoha18@gmail.com and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 324 of the Penal Code Laws of the Northern Nigeria.”
For Oladosu, count 2 of the charge reads: “That you, Oladosu Olakunmi Olamilekan (Joan Davis), sometime in March, 2018 in Ilorin within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court did cheat by personation when you pretended to be one Mike Storey, a white male with gmail account mikestorey948@gmail.com, and fraudulently deceived one Vicki Baldwin to send $300.00 (Three Hundred Dollars) worth of iTunes gift card and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 321 of the Penal Code and punishable under Section 324 of the same Penal Code.”
The two, pleaded guilty to the charges against them.
Upon their pleas, the prosecuting counsel, Sesan Ola, reviewed the facts of the cases through Lamidi Olanrewaju and Enoch Onyedikachi, who testified against Adeyemi and Oladosu, respectively.
The two witnesses, who are operatives of the EFCC told the court how intelligence report led to the arrest of the convicted students at the Ilorin International Airport. They tendered several fraudulent messages printed from their emails, the confessional statements of the defendants and the iPhones used as instruments of the crime, which the court admitted in evidence.
In his judgment, Justice Oyinloye said that, the court was convinced that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt going by the plea of guilt entered by the defendants, the unchallenged and contradicted evidence of the prosecution.
The judge, thereafter pronounced Adeyemi guilty and sentenced him to one year imprisonment with option of fine of N100, 000 (One Hundred Thousand Naira Only), while ordering the forfeiture of his iPhone to the Federal Government.
In a similar fashion, the court sentenced Oladosu to one year imprisonment each on count one and two, which is to run concurrently or optionally pay a fine of N100,000 (One Hundred Thousand Naira Only) each on the two counts. On count 3, the judge ordered the convict to pay a fine of N20,000 (Twenty Thousand Naira Only).
In addition, the court also ordered the forfeiture of a draft of N209,000 (Two Hundred and Nine Thousand Naira) raised in the convict’s name (Oladosu) and his iPhone to the Federal Government.
Packaged by Emmanuel Okafor
