Lady, 39, Defrauds Church Of N100m

CHUKA UBAH

A 39-year old lady, Iwuagwu Onyinyechi, has been arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for allegedly defrauding a Christian faith-based organisation to the tune of N100m, under the false pretence of assisting the organisation to raise funds for its charity programme.

The Ogun Police Command in a statement on Sunday by its spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said that lady’s arrest followed a petition written by a Lagos-based lawyer of the organisation, Godswill Ojakovo, to the Ogun State Commissioner of Police, in which he complained that his client was defrauded by the suspect through an act of forgery.

According to the PPRO, Oyeyemi, the suspect claimed to have got a Local Purchase Order (LPO) from a property company and appealed to the organisation to help fund the LPO, consequent upon which a sum of N33.118m was transferred into her bank account.

P.M.EXPRESS gathered that while the organisation was awaiting the repayment of the loan, the suspect came with two other LPOs which she claimed to have got from a Catholic Hospital, Iju and a private school in Ikorodu, Lagos State, upon which another sum of N77m was given to her, after convincing the organisation with relevant documents and proofs to back up her claims.

But as soon as the suspect got the last payment in September 2018, she reportedly disappeared into thin air and that prompted the organisation to make discreet inquiries about the LPOs which the lady had submitted and found out that both of them were forged.

“Upon the petition, the Commissioner of Police Ogun State, CP Ahmed Iliyasu, directed his monitoring team to go after the suspect and bring her to book. The team technically tracked the suspect and got her arrested on January 21, 2019.

“On interrogation, the lady confessed to the crime by admitting that the LPOs presented by her were forged and some of the companies she claimed to be the owners of the LPOs were made up by her.

“Meanwhile, the CP has directed the monitoring team to arraign the suspect in court as soon as the investigations were concluded” Oyeyemi stated.