three bankers who allegedly hacked into the account of a customer and diverted the sum of N150 million without the consent of the account owner.

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The long arm of the law has caught up with three bankers who allegedly hacked into the account of a customer and diverted the sum of N150 million without the consent of the account owner.

Reports say the suspects identified as Oyelade Shola-Isaac, 32, Osuolale Hammid, 40, and Akeem Adesina, 33, were arrested with eight other members in connection with the fraud namely: Okpetu John, 29; Chukwumnoso Ifeanyi, 30; and Salako Abdulsalam (all said to be MTN agents) and others, Ismaeel Salami, 49; Akinola Oghuan, 34; Sarumi Abubakar, 32; James Idagu, 56; and 33-year-old Sunday Okeke.

Police sources say five of the suspects including the kingpin identified as Salami were arrested at an eatery in the Bode Thomas area of the state by operatives of the Special Fraud Unit of the Nigeria Police Force .

Speaking after the arrest of the suspects, ASP Lawal Audu, the SFU spokesperson who revealed the mode of operation of the gang said customers who did not subscribe to Internet banking were the main victims of the syndictate.

He also revealed that when Salami was arrested, about 32 Automated Teller Machine cards belonging to the victims were found in his vehicle.

Audu said; “The work of the network provider suspects was to assist the bankers to swap the SIM cards of the targeted bank customers so that they were unable to receive alerts of any transactions on their accounts within the period that money was stolen from their accounts.

Contnuing, he added that; “The suspects, after successful withdrawals of the money, transferred the money into about 40 different accounts to avoid being detected. They carried out their operations at weekends and public holidays so as to evade being detected by the bank monitoring mechanisms or the owners of the accounts. They defrauded their victims to the tune of over N150m.”