Femi Oso, an alleged death row inmate at the Ibara Correctional Center in Ogun State, has been accused of using a romance scam to defraud a woman in the state of N17 million.
We learned that Oso and the victim connected through Facebook, and after chatting for some time, they started dating.
During the relationship, it was discovered that Oso’s lover paid him N17 million in installments through a Point-of-Sale operator named Ayoola.
The victim began to suspect foul play while evaluating her relationship with Oso, who reportedly never disclosed his status as an inmate to her, and later shared her experience with her sister, who has yet to be identified.
After that, the victim’s sister got her husband, a serving policeman with the Ondo State Police Command, involved. Based on the suspicion that the incident was a romance con, the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the command began an investigation into the matter.
The PoS operator was followed by the police to Ibara, Ogun State, where he was taken into custody and transported to their operational base in Akure, Ondo State, where he was questioned.
During the interrogation, it was discovered that Ayoola admitted that the money was intended for Oso and mentioned two individuals—a school cleaner named Nofisat Adeosun and Oso’s brother-in-law who went by the name Segun—as individuals who typically collected money from him on the instruction of the prisoner.
Adeosun described her ordeal on Monday. She said that on February 8, 2023, she was at work when the police stormed the building to arrest her. She also said that she was taken to their base in Akure.
She stated, “When the police arrested me at my workplace, Ibara Baptist Nursery and Primary School, I asked what my offense was and was informed that they would tell me when we get to their base in Akure.”
“When we got there, they informed me that I had been arrested due to a N17 million fraud committed by Femi Oso, a prisoner at Ibara Correctional Center. I was informed that Oso received the funds from Ayoola, a PoS operator.
“The police had arrested Ayoola and me on the allegation that I was aware of the fraud, but I insisted that I was unaware of it. Ayoola started pleading when I asked him at the station why he mentioned my name, especially since I wasn’t aware of the money.
The mother of two stated that she was detained for approximately ten days before being permitted to call Oluwafemi Adekunle, a family friend. Adekunle and his relative, Jide Ikumapayi, arrived to secure her bail.
However, she explained that the arrest resulted in the cancellation of her cleaning job at the school.
Ikumapayi talked about the case and said that while Adeosun’s arrest was a bad experience, the investigation showed that she had nothing to do with the crime.
He added that Ayoola and Oso’s brother-in-law Segun, who reportedly collected the N17 million from the PoS operator on behalf of his in-law for subsequent delivery to his sister, who was said to be still at large, were also arrested.
He stated, “When one of our family members was an inmate at Ibara Correctional Centre, if we wanted to send him money, we usually sent it to the PoS operator. Because Adeosun works at a school that is closer to the prison, she usually helped us get the money from the PoS operator to our person in prison.”
That our individual and Femi Oso were detained. He left after our individual served his sentence. Oso, a death row inmate, was aware, however, that Adeosun frequently assisted our individual in collecting money from the PoS operator. As a result, he begged her to assist him, and she occasionally assisted whenever his family sent him money.
So, when Ayoola, the owner of the PoS store near the prison, was arrested for the N17 million fraud, he claimed that he met Oso through Adeosun, but he refused to reveal that Adeosun had no knowledge of the N17 million. Ayoola informed the police at Akure that Segun received the N17 million from him, not Adeosun, and that is how she was granted bail.
Ikumapayi stated that Oso was brought into the Ibara Correctional Centre for questioning as part of an investigation and that he was not released due to his status as a death row inmate.
But he said that efforts were being made to arrest Oso’s wife, who went into hiding when she realized that the police were following her.
When contacted, Funmi Odunlami, the Police Public Relations Officer for the Ondo State Command, confirmed the development and stated that the case was still under investigation.
“When I spoke with the officer in charge of the case, he stated that the investigation was still ongoing and that he would not comment on it until they were finished. Odulami stated, “He stated that he wants to finish the case so that those who needed to be paraded would be paraded.”
Reached on Monday, the representative for the Nigeria Remedial Help in Ogun State, Victor Oyeleke, in the wake of getting a brief of the improvement from our reporter, vowed to make a few discoveries and get back for a response however didn’t do as such.
On Tuesday, he did not return calls to his phone number, and he had not yet responded to two text messages inquiring about the situation.
However, this isn’t the first time that the NCS has been mentioned in the news about inmates orchestrating fraudulent transactions while they are serving their time in the service.
Many sources said that in a statement in November 2019, the Economic Financial Crimes Commission’s spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, confirmed that Hope Aroke, a convicted Internet fraudster who was serving a 24-year sentence at the Kirikiri Maximum Correctional Centre in Lagos State, allegedly planned a $1 million scam while in custody.