Police Arrest Herbalist Over N1bn Fraud

Operatives of the anti-fraud unit of the Zone 16 headquarters of the Nigeria Police have arrested a Port Harcourt-based herbalist, Nnedim Ikechukwu, for alleged fraud to the tune of N1.150 billion and illegal possession of fake 1, 290,000 dollars.

According to the Police, while the anti-fraud unit were investigating the allegation of N1,150,000,000 fraud levelled against the suspect by one of his victims in Borokiri area of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, the search at the suspect’s home in Omogwa community showed that suspected fake $1,290,000 dollars were hidden in two medium size boxes.

Sources within the zonal police headquarters revealed that the suspect, who is an indigene of Imo State, claimed to be a native doctor and traditionalist and was contacted by two businessmen to provide them a spiritual charm that will make an expatriate give them a multi-million naira oil contract.

According to the source, “the native doctor charged them N550,000 each for the job and they paid him N1.6 million. The suspect purportedly prepared the charm and sometime in July 2022, they claimed the charm worked and an expatriate businessman in Nigeria secured them an oil supply job worth N152 million dollars, which is equivalent to N1,150,000,000.

“After they were paid for the job, the complainants brought the N152 million dollars to the suspect’s shrine for spiritual cleansing as directed by the suspect. But to their surprise, the suspect escaped with the whole dollars to Owerri, Imo State and refused to pick phone calls. They traced him and caught up with him but he brought out fake dollars to replace the genuine dollars they gave him.”

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It was also gathered that a team of detectives led by ASP Ubi Iwara, armed with a search warrant, moved to the home of the suspect and the sum of $1,290,000 US dollar notes suspected to be fake were recovered.

The zonal public relations officer of the Zone 16 Command, CSP Ikwo Kelvin Lafieghe, confirmed the arrest of the suspect stating that he was paraded for alleged involvement in Advanced Free Fraud popularly called 419 and unlawful possession of fake dollars.