From January to December 15, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was able to secure 65 convictions of financial fraudsters in the states of Sokoto, Kebbi, and Zamfara.
This was revealed to reporters by Mr. Aliyu Yunusa, the Sokoto Zonal Commander, on Friday during the commission’s annual celebration of its accomplishments in Sokoto.
According to Yunusa, the zonal command has achieved more convictions than it had set a goal of 50. She credited staff commitment, assistance from sister organizations, community-based organizations, and individual citizens for the results.
He pointed out that the most common types of cases that were reported involved impersonations that involved using someone else’s National Identity Number (NIM) as a stand-in, accepting money that was stolen, copying ATM cards to withdraw cash from third parties, and deceiving people by making false pretenses.
“The most important celebration is that we stopped various crimes, discovered numerous frauds and recovered funds from fraudsters within the year.
“The get-together was to encourage the workers by showcasing the achievements and challenges with hope of improving in the coming year,” Yunusa said.
According to him, the zonal office is faced with manpower challenges and staff training on specialised cyber crimes as fraudsters use modern ways of swindling people.
“When incidents happened, we look at it with forensic eye to block the loopholes and fast-track investigations; thereby more sophistication is needed,” the commander added.
He reaffirmed that the commission would keep collaborating to combat crime at all levels with community development clubs, NYSC, zero-corruption tolerance groups in schools, and other CBOs.
He thanked the media for their unwavering support of the command and gave them instructions to further up their efforts to raise public awareness of EFCC initiatives and fraud in general in order to ultimately put an end to all illegal financial transactions.
Heads of state and federal agencies as well as representatives from community organizations attended the event.
(NAN)
