‘Stealing money from peoples’ account is as easy as ABC’

CP, SFU, Ogunshakin

After writing the  Joint Matriculation Examination five times  in order to be able to get admission into any of the tertiary Universities, without succeeding,  28-year-old Sabastine Esisorigho finally threw in the towel.

He turned to crime and took to it like duck to water.

He described himself as Yahoo Yahoo guy and revealed that he was one of the faceless con-men who used to defraud people through an email message called Interswitch.

Interswitch is usually sent to victims’ accounts, advising them to fill a form, which it will use to update their Automated Teller Machine (ATM) information.

Among the details asked by Interswitch is the provision of victims’ ATM card numbers and their personal identification numbers (PIN).

Immediately a victim puts all these in the form and clicks send, the scammers receive it. Armed with these details, the fraudsters will be able to clone any victims’ ATM cards. After which they go to any ATM centre to withdraw all the money in the victims’ account or transfer the money electronically out of the account.

Through Interswitch, hundreds of unsuspecting Nigerians had been milked of their hard earned money. They filled this form on line, believing they were dealing with the genuine Interswitch company Limited.

The arrest of Esisorigho by detectives of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Ikoyi, Lagos State, led to the suspect revealing how people could easily avoid falling into the traps of financial crime fraudsters.

The suspect also revealed trade secrets to the police, but kept mum on questions that had to do with the revelation of other members of his syndicate.

He claimed that he usually works solo.

Narrating how Esisorigho was arrested, the police said: “The Special Fraud Unit in its battle against ATM fraudsters recorded yet another success. This followed a petition received from a victim who holds an account with a new generation bank. It was discovered that on January, 28, the victim deposited the sum of N316, 000.00 into his account.

“Almost immediately, he received an SMS alert, which his account had been debited for the said sum, which led to his reporting to the Bank and police.  Detectives with the co-operation of the bank staff were able to trace the suspect’s number, 08036405026 to a genuine account holder in the bank.

“This activated the process that led to the suspect’s arrest. Upon arrest and interrogation, he initially denied, but when a search of person yielded the SIM card of that number carefully concealed in the lining of his jean trouser, he confessed to the crime and made useful statement.”

The suspect’s modus operandi involved creating a fraudulent website, www.Interswitchatmcard.com, which card holders are requested to submit their ATM cards details, including PINs, as if it emanated from the original Interswitch limited, which usually powers ATM cards. 

A detective added: “On getting the victim’s details, he clones the ATM card, together with his accomplice and withdraws the money. The stolen money had been recovered. Upon his arrest, we ran a check on our database of unsolved ATM fraud cases and a match was made. He was discovered to have stolen N1.310, 000 from a customer’s account in another new generation bank sometime in 2009, using stolen details. He then electronically transferred the stolen money to an account in a first generation bank which he opened with the name David Akpan. He withdrew the money, using various ATM cards and his footage was captured.”

The suspect was also involved in using the stolen PINs to purchase recharge cards of various networks.

Esisorigho, who is a school certificate holder, revealing how he used to ensnare victims said: “I have a website, which is www.interswitchatmcard.com, I generate victims’ email addresses through goggle and send the message I want through advance mass sender to different emails. You can use it to send as many as 500 emails. In the message to these email addresses, I ask people for their ATM details, pretending that I am from the real Interswitch provider. I also ask the people for their Personal Identifications Numbers (PINs).

“I will tell them in the email that if they don’t send this information, they might not be able to further make use of their ATM cards. Once I get the information, I go to yahoo messenger Hackers room, to get someone that can clone the ATM cards.”

According to him, it was through the yahoo messenger Hackers room that he was able to connect with one Francis, who came to Lagos to assist him clone an ATM card.

Esisorigho claimed that it was Francis that took the N316, 000.00 in a victim’s account and later gave him just N40, 000.

“After he cloned the ATM card, I went to check the account about three times, but it was always empty. I later left the card to Francis; he called me to say the owner had put money. He said it was N50, 000. He gave me N40, 000 and took N10, 000. I didn’t know the money was up to N316, 000.00 until after I was arrested. Francis said he gave me the larger amount because he wanted to ginger me up, so that I could get more details of people.”

Esisorigho, who apparently seemed to come from an affluent family, denied knowing about the missing N316, 000.00, but he told detectives that if they called his father and notified him of the missing money, the man would refund it.

Through to his words, when his father was alerted, the man refunded the money. This made detectives to start speculating that probably the parents of Esisorigho knew he was into cyber fraud.

The young insisted that he knew his father would pay just to protect the good name of the family and not because he or his mother knew about his criminal activities.

He also said that sometimes, the easiest way to infiltrate victims’ account was through getting hold of their ATM card numbers and PINs, at the ATM centres.

He explained that he would just queue behind anyone who comes to make an ATM withdraw and memories the card number and PIN as the person’s punches them into the machine.

It was through this way he was able to steal N650, 000 from a victim’s account. But detectives are alleging that the money was not N650, 000 but over a million plus.

Asked to tell the members of the public how to protect themselves from fraudsters like him, Esisorigho said: “My advice to people is that when going to ATM centre, don’t bring the ATM card out in way that people can see it. Also try as much as possible to safeguard your PIN. If they don’t get your card number but have the PIN, they can’t do anything to your account. If they have your PIN and don’t have your ATM card number, they can’t do anything to your account. And if you open your email and see a message from interswitch, don’t fill it. It’s false!

“Just delete or over look it. If you fill the details the form asked for, it means you’re just given your details to the wrong person.”