A Lagos High Court has sentenced to 12 months in prison a Nigerian Internet fraudster, Promise Ntuen Ekemini, who tried to sell a property located in Western Australia valued at $800,000 (About N148 million) without the owner’s consent.
Ekemini allegedly intercepted an email from the owner of the property, obtained information on it and subsequently put it up for sale on the Internet.
He was arraigned in April, 2014 on a five-count charge of conspiracy to defraud, attempting to obtain money by false pretences and forgery and was convicted by Justice Kudirat Jose who found him guilty found on all the charges and sent him to 12 months jail.
His sentence is to run from the day he was arraigned, meaning that he would be out of prison by April next year. Ekemini was said to have hijacked the email of the owner of the property, Brian Roderick Daniel, from where he got information of his intention to sell it. He then offered it for sale on the Internet.
However, his scheme was discovered and the Australian Police alerted the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which launched a plan to arrest the fraudster. The commission set up a scheme to deliver documents relating to the property to him and he fell for it.
When he showed up to collect the documents, he was arrested by the commission’s operatives.