A four-man cartel which specialises in cyber bullying and blackmailing female undergraduates after taking possession of their nude images has been busted.
The cartel was uncovered by the Akin Fadeyi Foundation using the app, FLAG’IT, at the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD), Daily Trust learnt.
The busting of the cartel followed complaints received on the FLAG’IT App developed by the foundation to enable people report incidences of corruption and gender-based violence.
The cartel’s ring leader, 19-year-old David Ofoeyeno, also a student of ABUAD, who has been arrested, blackmailed 17 female undergraduates.
The blackmailers, it was revealed, would lure their victims as girlfriends and later obtain their nude pictures with the intent of extorting them.
Ofoeyeno, a 300-level student of media and communication, was arrested following a three-month covert investigation conducted by the Akin Fadeyi Foundation with the help of security agencies.
He was arraigned on Monday at a Federal High Court in Ekiti State on a six-count charge under the Cyber Crime Prohibition and Prevention Act 2015, and the case was adjourned to December 10, 2020.
Ofoeyeno’s three accomplices are Darlington Emojeya – a 300-Level engineering student; Omokolade Israel Aiyedogbon, a recent graduate of the university who is yet to be cleared; and Oyedele Adeolu Akinsola, – 300-Level student of political science.
At a virtual press briefing yesterday, the founder and Executive Director of Akin Fadeyi Foundation, Mr. Akin Fadeyi, said the organisation was notified of the blackmail and extortion on May 27, 2020, during the lockdown occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Fadeyi disclosed that the foundation was able to unmask the students behind the crime through the help of the authorities of ABUAD, the police and the wife of the Governor of Ekiti State, Erelu Bisi Fayemi.
He said no effort would be spared to get justice for the victims, expressing regret that “some of our younger ones have turned Nigerian universities to centres of macabre and theatre of predators.”
He disclosed that one of the victims almost committed suicide because the boys kept pressuring and threatening her that they would put her nude pictures on social media if she did not approach her parents for money.
Fadeyi explained that, “On May 27, this year, while Nigeria was on lockdown, we got reports that some students of a Nigerian university were luring university girls to become their girlfriends.
“After they had secured their trust, they would ask them to send their nude pictures to participate in a beauty pageant. After about a month or two, these boys started harassing these girls, threatening them, demanding for N25,000 or N50,000 with the threat that if they didn’t give the money, their pictures would end up on social media.”
The Founder of ABUAD, Aare Afe Babalola, who spoke through the Dean of Students Affairs, Babatunde Wahab, promised to get to the root of the matter.
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