Popular Nigerian Afro-pop artiste Naira Marley, a.k.a Azeez Fashola has been linked by an investigative team of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to credit card fraud.
On Thursday, the Cyber Crime Section of the EFCC led by Whyte Dein submitted reports of its forensic investigations before the Federal High Court in Ikoyi. Dein, the Chief Detective Officer of the unit told the court that his team’s investigations revealed that the hip hop star was involved in credit card fraud.
Naira Marley is standing trial on an 11-count charge of conspiracy, possession of counterfeit credit cards and fraud contrary to Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act and the Cyber Crimes Act. According to the EFCC, he committed the offences between November 26 and December 11, 2018, and May 10, 2018. Back in May 2019, he was arraigned on the charges but was subsequently granted bail.
At the resumption of the trial on Thursday, Dein told the court that the EFCC had discovered conversations of Marley’s phone that supported their case.
He said,
“One of our findings from the forensic report shows the exchange of chat messages with several persons when the defendant sent credit card details, including card numbers and expiration dates. Visa card details were one of those sent by the defendant to a certain person known on his contact list as Raze. This message sent Visa Card details to Raze, after which Raze replied that the card was not valid.”
“We were able to establish through investigation the previous messages he sent with a wrong card that was indeed not valid. We then repeated the same process a second time which was now valid.”
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Furthermore, he told the court that the Naira Marley used a multi-lingual browser to access illegal networks.
“The defendant used malicious tools to disguise the identity and location of the user of the laptop when connected to the internet along with the presence of the Top Browser which acted as a single gateway to the dark net. This gave us a reasonable ground to suspect that the defendant had been engaging in fraudulent card activities. And this was established through a reply to our request to Visa Western Union Card.”
The Investigator concluded by saying the findings by the EFCC pointed out the defendant’s involvement in cyber fraud. The case was adjourned till July 13 for ruling on the points raised, and July 15 for continuation of trial.
