The Niger State Police Command has nabbed three suspects who specialised in the business of money counterfeiting and recovered N4.9 million suspected to be fake money in their possession.
Parading the suspects at the police headquarters, the command’s PPRO, ASP Bala Ezikiel, told newsmen that the suspects were arrested, following a tip from the patriotic members of the public in Minna, the state capital.
He said Mohammed Abubakar was arrested by police operatives and upon interrogation, he led detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to the arrest his two other accomplices whose names were given as Ibrahim Mohammed and Mohammed Baba Jiya.
“During investigation, police detectives found the money through one of the suspects, Ibrahim Mohammed, who linked the money to two fleeing suspects identified as Alhaji Ali and Abdullahi from Kaduna,” he said.
Fielding questions from newsmen, the three suspects, who admitted committing the crime, said nobody has fallen victim of their crime, adding that was their first time of taking part in the illegal business.
Mohammed, who said he is a casual staff with one of the new generation banks in Minna, said their own role in the crime was to market the counterfeit money, adding that they were asked to sale the amount of N1million counterfeit money at the cost N250, 000.
He said that when he was introduced into the business in Kaduna, he was told that the money given to him was counterfeited, adding that he was expecting to make commission of N50, 000.
He said: “If we get customers who are ready to buy as much as N1 million of the counterfeit money, our own commission is fixed at N50, 000 of genuine naira notes.
“If we were successful in selling the entire N4.9 million counterfeit money, we would have made a profit of N1 million of genuine naira notes from selling the cash to unsuspecting members of the public.”
He added that in order to market counterfeited cash, he recruited his two accomplices, based on the same working conditions with himself, insisting that the three of them, now in police net, knew that they were marketing counterfeited money.
He, therefore, pleaded with the police to tamper justice with mercy in the course of handling their case.
