The Operatives of the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of the Bauchi State Command acting on a verified intelligence on 20th May 2022, arrested five suspected cybercriminals.
A press statement by the Command PPRO, SP Ahmed Wakili, said the command burst an apartment housing the criminals at Kirfi Road, GRA, Bauchi.
He said the apartment is where youths who want to venture into internet crime, (yahoo-yahoo), are being trained by one Emmanuel Saleh alias Wizblaq, a 22-year-old man from Rafin-Zurfi, Bauchi.
According to the PPRO, the suspects include Emmanuel Saleh alias Wizblaq (the ringleader); Matthias Akronyi alias Mad Kid,20 years of Block 24, 82 Division’s Army Barracks, Enugu; Patience Nuhu 21 years of Rafin-Zurfi, Bauchi; Bulus Haruna 18 years old of Rafin-Zurfi, Bauchi and Kingsley Simon 19 years old of Rafin-Zurfi, Bauchi.
He revealed that the items recovered from the residential apartment turned training centre are four laptops, one television set, four sound systems, a brand new power generator, seven plastic chairs, one office chair, a Musical keyboard and a fridge.
He added that findings revealed that the principal suspect, Emmanuel Saleh and members of the syndicate targeted foreign women under a proxy server, hacked by spoofing the victim’s email account/website which makes it possible to carry out variations in the legitimate email of the victims to fool the victim and gain access to the accounts, calendar and data.
During the investigation, the suspects confessed to the crime.
According to him, the Commissioner of Police has directed that the suspects be charged to court as soon as the investigation is concluded.
“Consequently, the Commissioner of Police, Bauchi State Command CP. Umar Mamman Sanda advised the citizens of Bauchi State to take note of the following precautions to mitigate against cybercrime”, the release further contained.
”The general public is to be careful of the information they shared online (e.g pet names, Date of Birth etc), don’t click on anything in an unsolicited email/SMS asking to update or verify account information.
”They are also to carefully examine the email address, URL, and spelling used in any correspondence and set up two factors (or multi-factor) authentication on any account that allows it”.