$110,000 fraud: EFCC nabs fake ADB director July 24, 2013 BY MPP LAGOS—A man described by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, as a serial fraudster, has been arrested by the operatives of the agency and taken to custody in Abuja. Dr. Princewell Arinze Chukwueze, who has been presenting himself in public as Aboki J. Brown, and Director with the African Development Bank based in Cote D’ Ívoire, was alleged to have swindled several unsuspecting Nigerians of huge sums of hard currency. The EFCC said, yesterday, that its operatives succeeded in arresting the man after laying ambush for him for over two months. The latest offence that landed him in trouble was the alleged swindling of a Lagos-based bureau de change operator of $92,000 in May this year. The spokesman for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, who confirmed the arrest, alleged that Chukwueze offered to buy $65,000 from the currency dealer but later increased it to $92,000. He said the fake banker thereafter tricked the dealer to follow him to a bank in Lekki area of Lagos in order to be given the Naira equivalent of the dollars to be sold to him. But on getting to the bank in Lekki, the suspect pleaded with the operator to accompany him in his siren-blaring Toyota Hilux Pick-Up Van to a “nearby branch of a bank. On the way to the said bank, Chukwueze picked up two armed men on the road who forcefully dispossessed the operator of the $92,000 and threw him off his vehicle. Thereafter, he allegedly went on another voyage to disposes another hard currency dealer of $110,000 where he was arrested. Before then, he had successfully fleeced many other unsuspecting currency dealers in Abuja and Lagos. Items recovered from him included 21 different telephone handsets, complimentary cards of African Development Bank bearing Aboki J. Brown, fake $15,000 bills, cheque books of different banks among others. Uwujaren confirmed that Chukwueze would soon be charged to court.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:15:26 +0000