The Lagos State Police Command has apprehended two university students for concocting a kidnapping plot against themselves in a bid to extort money from their parents.
It was gathered that the spokesperson for the state command, Benjamin Hundeyin, disclosed this development on Thursday, identifying the culprits as 21-year-old Ayodele Balogun, a student of Lagos State University (LASU), and Dennis Okuomo, also 21, who attends the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) in Lagos.
The elaborate hoax involved the suspects demanding a ransom of $100,000 in Bitcoin from their distraught parents.
Hundeyin explained that Dennis Okuomo initially conceived the idea as a means to financially assist his friend Ayodele, who comes from an underprivileged background.
To execute their plan, Ayodele vanished from his home, and Dennis, using Ayodele’s phone, contacted Mr. Balogun, Ayodele’s father, to announce the faux kidnap and demanded a $20,000 ransom (approximately N30 million).
The ransom was to be paid in bitcoin to a wallet address provided by the suspects, with Ayodele hiding in Dennis’s room located in his father’s hotel during this period.
Ayodele’s father, who works as a driver, was left in a state of despair, clueless about how to secure the demanded amount.
In a twist, Dennis also pretended to be kidnapped, this time setting the ransom at a staggering $100,000 (about N150 million) to be paid by his own father.
The duo subsequently took refuge in a bush for five days, hoping to pressure their families into paying the ransom.
However, as their situation in the bush became intolerable without a ransom payment, they decided to return to Dennis’s room in the hotel.
Upon their return, they fabricated a story of a daring escape from their captors and immediately informed Ayodele’s father about their release.
Ayodele was then taken to a hospital under the pretence that he had just been freed from a kidnappers’ den.
The police spokesperson confirmed that the suspects are now in police custody, and investigations have unveiled the entire kidnap to be a ruse orchestrated by the students themselves.
Hundeyin branded them as “perpetrators of self-kidnap,” underscoring the severity of their deceitful actions.
However, the police warned against such fraudulent schemes, highlighting the distress and panic they cause to families and the unnecessary diversion of law enforcement resources.