Lagos Court Grants N50m Bail to Hackers Over Alleged N1.9bn Fraud, Imposes Strict Conditions 

A court has granted N50 million bail to hackers who allegedly committed N1.9 billion fraud.

Justice Akintayo Aluko of the Federal High Court in Lagos, Monday, granted a N50 million bail sum to alleged fraudsters who were said to have defrauded MTN Nigeria Communication of the sum of N1.9 billion.

The trial judge granted them bail after hearing two separate bail applications filed by the defendants. 

In addition to the bail sum, Justice Aluko also ordered the defendants to provide two sureties each one of the sureties must be a civil servant either in the federal or Lagos State employment, who must be grade level 14 and above, while the second surety, must be a landed property owner within the jurisdiction of the court, provide evidence of ownership, and must swear to an affidavit of means.

In the case of the civil servant, he/she must produce reference letter of his place of work, and letter of last promotion, while the defendants must submit two recent passport photographs to the registrar of the court.

Justice Aluko ordered that the prosecution should verify all documents submitted by the sureties including their residential addresses.

The court further ordered that the defendants be remanded in the custody of the Nigerian Correctional Services (NCoS) pending the fulfilment of their bail conditions 

It would be recalled that men of the Police Special Fraud Unit, Milverton Road Ikoyi, Lagos, had last week arraigned the duo of Timothy Fashina Oluwabukola and Anthony Imonina Odemerho, said to be a student of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic (MAPOLY) Abeokuta, Ogun State, and proprietor of Resign Regal Academy in Benin City, Edo State, respectively, for allegedly hacking into MTN web-based platform known as Application Programming Interface (API) stole N1, 900, 000, 000 worth of airtime and data.