Police are parading gang members for siphoning money from banks through SIM cards

A syndicate describe as digital thieves led by one Muritala Mohammed alias Swallow were amongst those paraded by the commissioner of police Lagos command for siphoning money from bank accounts through SIM cards.

The commissioner said officers and men of the Rapid Response Squad carried out the investigation.

Parading the suspects, the police boss said it all started when a phone was stolen at a party and the owner had to retrieve her SIM.

The police commissioner said the victim in her own account stated that she went to the service provider for a SIM card replacement and that immediately she inserted the new card into her new phone she started receiving transaction alerts. A total sum of N1, 253, 000 was withdrawn from her account.

It is a well-organized gang made up of six members, two for each operation and a motorcycle rider. The job of this arm is simple.

Each member of the gang narrated his part played in siphoning money from bank accounts

One of the members said this: We are the ones that use to collect the phones; we get the phone as 419 making the person go for an errant to leave his/her phone with them to remove the SIM.

Another member Solomon Dike has this to say: My own (Solomon Dike) part is when they are through with the person, they call me on phone but then I would hang around and enter the bike.

The news correspondent said having picked the phones they then handover to Swallow who’s interest is the SIM card and once he gets hold of it he set out to hack into the owner’s bank account.

Muritala Mohammed alias Swallow has this to say: I (Swallow) use SIM card to recharge via bank that is *904*amount# then I (Swallow) send it to receive a reply to know whether the SIM card is linked to bank account or not. If it is linked to an account I (Swallow) will know what to do from there. The banks I (Swallow) target are Access Bank, UBA bank and GTBank.