Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has disclosed that the board lost over N10m to hackers in 2020.
According to him, the fraudsters hacked into the portal they use in paying ad-hoc staff, changed the details of the staff and wired the money to different beneficiaries.
He made the disclosure on Wednesday at the JAMB headquarters in Abuja.
Oloyede noted that the money was what was expected to pay ad-hoc staff used for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) but the board had to source fund from somewhere else to pay those affected.
He however added that 10 of the suspected hackers were eventually arrested in Kaduna, Nasarawa, and Abuja.
He said in his statement, “We did not ask anyone to apply to be an ad-hoc staff on the site, we had already chosen them through recommendations from various agencies.
“We only created the site just to pay them via a code that was assigned to them.
“However, these suspects gained access to the site, deleted the original account details and phone numbers, and inserted theirs.
“We paid N20, 000 each for accommodation per night and N100, 000 for flight tickets, depending on the location of each staff to go and work for that period.
“The payments ranged from N200, 000 to over N300, 000 per person. Yet, these suspected fraudsters after gaining access to the websites also inserted details for their family members.
“They didn’t go to partake in the exercise but ignored the messages sent from our domain.
“One of them, Saidu Zubairu collected over N3.7 million for himself because he inserted the account details of his mother, sisters, and other family members.
“We have not calculated all the monies they all have so far received but altogether, the amount will definitely sum up to more than N10 million.
“We have already paid the original owners, though it took us over a year to track the suspects, we finally apprehended them and I assure you the law will take its cause.’’
One of the suspects, Mr. Saidu Zubairu, said that he got the code for the site through his friend (who is still at large) and gave it to others.
He noted that he submitted the details of 12 family members to the site and all of them got paid above N300, 000
He said, “I succeeded in changing the original details in the site and asked eight other friends of mine to do same and they confirmed receipt of payment afterwards.”
Zubairu however, pleaded that he be forgiven and given time to refund the money.
