Police arrest actor, undergraduate for defrauding traders with fake bank alerts

Operatives of the Police Command in Oyo State has arrested a man, Olumide Olajide, for allegedly defrauding traders in Ibadan with fake bank alerts.

Olajide, who claims to be a Yoruba film actor, was among those paraded at the state police command headquarters, Eleyele, Ibadan, on Monday.

The actor, who was paraded alongside his partner, Wemimo Adeyanju, a Higher National Diploma student of Purchasing and Supply at a polytechnic in the South-West, told our correspondent in an interview that he was arrested in the Apete area of Ibadan.

Asked to explain how he used to generate the fake bank alerts, Olajide said he would ask for the account numbers and names of the sellers after buying goods from them.

After this, he would use the information to generate their details by dialling the USSD code of his bank.

After generating the recipient’s name, he said he would alter the old bank alert sent to him by his bank and change the date and the amount, and resend same to the recipient.

According to him, the fake alert sent will show on the recipient’s phone as a genuine alert from his bank.

He said, “I did it just three times before I was arrested. After seeing the alert, they would allow me to go away with the goods paid for with the fake bank alert.