The growing trend of misinformation, cyberfraud and phishing has put individuals and organisations at the mercy of criminal elements cloning social media accounts, especially Facebook, to perpetrate crime. This situation is worsened by Facebook’s failure or long delay in taking actions on most occasions, Daily Trust Saturday reports.
A suspected fraudster, Imaobong Akpan, made 10 young women pay ‘in cash and kind’ after he paraded himself as an aide to Pastor Umo Eno, the Commissioner for Land and Water Resources in Akwa Ibom State.
Akpan, who was paraded by the state police command in January 2022, didn’t defraud his victims at gunpoint or draw a dagger at them. His fraudulent tool was just a click on Facebook – an open social networking service recently renamed as Meta.
Some of the exhibits recovered from him by the police include five SIM cards, two phones, dollar and yuan notes.
The police spokesperson in the state, Odiko MacDon, said Akpan defrauded unsuspecting members of the public, mostly women, by offering them fake jobs after having sex with them.
“The suspect, who is a notorious fraudster and sex maniac, confessed to have fraudulently created the Facebook account. He used the said account to lure innocent and unsuspecting young women to hotels, have carnal knowledge of them, with a promise to assist them secure jobs, while defrauding others of various sums of money running into millions.
