Blue Water gang member confesses: We hack bank accounts with driver’s licence, voter’s card, debit alerts

By Evelyn Usman & Esther Onyegbula

ONE of the seven members of a notorious robbery gang arrested by the Police in Lagos has said “we hack into victims’ bank accounts through their ATM cards, voter’s cards and driver’s licence.”

The gang, known as Blue Water Boys, has been terrorising residents of Ojo, Okokomaiko, Ajagbandi, Ijanikin, Iba and its environs, along with the Mile-2 Badagry Expressway, Lagos.

Members of the gang operated in a group of 20 and 30, dispossessing helpless residents of cash, Automated Teller Machine, ATM, cards, telephones, driver’s license and other valuables.

The gang met its Waterloo after information got to policemen that some of its members were sighted making withdrawals from an ATM at the Alaba branch of a second generation bank.

Operatives from Ojo Division and those from the Federal Anti-Robbery Squad, FSARS, according to the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Police Command, Imohimi Edgal, “were swiftly mobilised to the scene, where they arrested two of the robbers while others escaped.

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“Two ATM cards and one mobile phone belonging to a victim were recovered and the suspects gave their names as Olalekan Ayoola and Sodiq Olalere.

“Their confession led to the arrest of five other suspected members of the gang, from different locations and their arms and ammunition recovered.”

Exhibits recovered from them included four mobile phones, three laptops, 13 unused live cartridges and one expended cartridge.”

One of the suspects Olalekan Ayoola aka Label Money, aged 21, disclosed that he used an application in his phone known as Fletter to hack into victims’ bank accounts and, thereafter, transfer their funds into his account.

According to Ayoola, “we hack into victims’ accounts through their ATM cards, voter’s cards and driver’s license. Some banks are easy to hack than others.

“If we steal a phone, we can use information on the victim’s debit alert to hack into his/her account. Once I use the application, the hidden numbers will show.

“My job in the gang is to hack into accounts and at the end of each operation, I get N120,000.”

The identities of other suspected members of the gang are Muftau Ibrahim otherwise called Sakushaku, 25; Ogundiran Adeniyi, 24, and Dare Oyetola alias Paper, 32.

Efforts, according to Edgal, are still on to arrest other fleeing members of the gang, adding that the suspects would be charged to court.