The Lagos State Police Command has burst two syndicates of suspected fraudsters,who also involved in kidnapping their victims.
The syndicates targeted passengers, especially early morning worshippers and those going to work who they swindled and in some cases, kidnapped them for ransom .
One of the syndicates,led by Emmanuel Njoku,60, however described most of their victims as greedy,adding that they were tricked with dollars
No fewer that 14 suspects,including an ex convict have been arrested in connection with the two gangs ,while the police have intensified efforts to arrest other members of the gang and to recover their operational vehicles .
The gang led by 60-year-old Njoku has six commercial vehicles which his gang members use during operations.
The state Commissioner of Police ,Olohundare Jimoh , who addressed journalists at one Njoku’s shrines in Idimu, said the gangs forcefully compelled some of their victims by kidnapping them and forcing their families to pay ransom .
Njoku confessed to the police that he joined the gang about eight years ago ,adding that his duty was to bring victims to their coordinators .
He revealed that, ” Some of our victims are greedy.We lure them with dollars and we lied to them that we have dollars and after showing them some fake dollar notes,they will believe that we are genuine and we can change their lives.”
CP Jimoh told newsmen that,” It is quite important to brief you at this point. it’s the beginning of the year and this is the first press briefing that we are having in the new year.
” We have made a lot of successes throughout last year. This year, we have commenced in earnest .
” one of the gangs is led by Rotimi Adeluola. He has about six teams across Lagos State . These gangs have operational vehicles that they use to pick unsuspecting members of the public in the early hours of the morning and in the wee hours of the night.
“They take them from different locations to where we are now and take them into that room that is called their shrine.
“They are like a two- edged sword criminal gangs, in the sense that if you play along with them and you give them what they want at the first instance by the pretence that they have dollar, they have other things to sell and things like that and even if they want you to bring in your money for investment to get your money doubled to what you want .If you play along and they are they successfully defrauded in that process they allow you to go.
” But if you are too smart for them and you know that this is a fraud and you are not ready to cooperate with them, they keep you here in this shrine and you start calling your family that you have been kidnapped and until when your family now come to pay the ransom to them before they release you.
” They equally pick people who are coming from worship centres at the the early hours of the morning because both muslim and christian faithful worship very early in the morning and we have limited complaint from the people.
After arresting these three initial suspects they brought us here that is the operational base and you can see the leader of the gang that I mentioned Ademola Adeluola who has been running these activities for more than eight years in this domain.
“We carry out on the spot search of the premises and we recover some weapons that they are using to commit the act and we equally go further to raid the entire area to arrest other members of the gang.
” Mind you, the three suspects that were arrested yesterday are the people that they sent out. The leader of the gangs are two, the superior one and the two others .
“So we have moved out and we have arrested additional 10 suspects making the total 13 in this circumstance that we have arrested.
” We are going to go full into the investigation because we must mop them out of the entire state,including those that surge in from other contiguous states to the state with the intention to perpetrate this kind of act.”
Jimoh, however, warnd that he has unleashed tactical units to go after criminals, especially fraudsters trobling innocent citizens. ..
