Oil fraud: police held three for defrauding victims over N170m

Clement Aladay

The Lagos State Police Command has arrested three men for defrauding several victims of money running to over N170million.
The suspects have been named as Clement Aladay Eneche a.k.a Clinton, Lawrence Audu Oduh and Mike Edache Enenche. There is a fourth suspect identified as Emmanuel Amakre, but he is presently at large.
Police Spokesperson, Ngozi Braide, explained that the suspects were arrested by Area ‘B’ Police Command, Apapa, Wharf, Lagos.
She further said the men were arrested based on a tip-off, alleging that the suspects had defrauded victims to the tune of over N170 million.
According to her, Clement Enenche is the master minder and kingpin of the syndicate.
Braide said: “The syndicate specialise in defrauding innocent citizens of valuables, especially petroleum products (AGO diesel) and PMS (Fuel). Through these criminals act, the syndicate has succeeded in defrauding people to the tune of N175m.
“This syndicate floated three companies namely; Hephzibah Energy Resources Limited, Deep Flank Energy Resources and Blue Moon Energy Resources Limited through which they perpetrate their illegal acts.
“The fraudsters equally opened several bank accounts with various Banks to facilitate the commissioning of crimes, such as Fidelity bank with account no 4010741992, Diamond Bank with Account no 0024570380, Sterling Bank with Account no 0016979153, FCMB with Account no 0738460014, GTB Bank with Account, 0118579822 and UBA with Account no 1016490678.”
Revealing their modus operandi, Braide said: “They would approach clients or customers, giving them local purchasing order (LPO), claiming to be dealing in oil business. Once they collect oil from the victim, they sell it and rather than come back to pay the person, they’ll disappear with the money.
“Sometimes they would even send false bank alert to the victim’s phone, making the person to believe that money had been remitted into his account for the oil he supplied to the syndicate.  We’re already working on arresting the bank insider who used to assist them in sending the false alert. They are also in the habit of giving dud cheques.”
It was gathered that on January 1, 2013, the syndicate defrauded one Emmanuel Nnamezie, managing Director Echemas Nigeria Limited, situated at 2 Bauchi Road, Jos, Plateau of 33,000 litres of PMS valued at N4, 653,000.00k and ran into hiding.
The case was reported at Area B, Apapa. During investigation, detectives traced the buyer of the products named Okey Ikeh.  He however claimed to have bought the products genuinely from Mike Edache Enenche and his cohorts who were then at large.
Ikeh accepted responsibility and paid the cost of the products. Detectives then set a trap for the syndicate through Ikeh and it later paid off.
On May 17, 2013, one of the syndicates, named  Lawrence Audu Oduj in a bid to defraud one Babajide Babatope  of Damok Nigeria Limited of 18,000 litres of AGO(Diesel) valued at N2,025,000.00k, took the said product to this said Ikeh and detectives  were promptly alerted.
Detectives, led by Inspector Yusuf Mediu raced to the scene and arrested the suspect.
After interrogation, he led detectives to Chervy View Estate, Lekki, Lagos State, where Mike Edache Enenche, who is the operation manager of the syndicate company, was arrested.
The kingpin, Clement Aladay Enenche was arrested on May 21, 2013.
Clement Aladay denied being a fraudster. According to him, he was owing some people which was not a crime in the Nigerian constitution. He also denied ever issuing anybody dud cheque, explaining that the victims went to the bank when they were not supposed to. He added that he was being victimised by certain people, whom he would not want to mention for now.