The Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) wish to notify members of the public
about the activities of a syndicate of fraudsters that have been circulating
fake EFCC invitation letters to some heads of agencies of government purporting
that the letters emanated from the Commission in respect of petitions against
them.
One such letter
sent to the National Engineering Design and Development Institute in Anambra State and entitled, Investigation Activities: Letter of investigation reads thus:
“Acting on the petition against you and after
preliminary investigation conducted by our operatives, and the need to invite
you to the Commission’s Abuja
office for a chat becomes imperative (sic)
“Your are advice(sic) to call the Principal
Detective Superintendent(PDS) Adeniyi in charge of this number for information,
time and date of your appointment immediately you receive this letter. Failure
to comply, the commission will assume you are already on the run while a
manhunt will commence out rightly” (sic).
Another letter
with exactly the same wording was also sent to the Chief Medical Director of a
Teaching Hospital in Delta state only that the name of the supposed officer he
was asked to contact and the telephone number were changed.
The similarity between
these letters and many others that have come to the attention of the Commission
clearly establish that this is the handiwork of a particular syndicate out to
defraud unsuspecting chief executives of government agencies.
Their targets
are heads of government agencies and ministries in obscure locations, far
removed from the cities where the EFCC offices are located.
The Commission
wishes to advise members of the public to discountenance any invitation letter
purportedly emanating from the EFCC that contains a personal telephone number of an individual. No authentic EFCC invitation
letters bears the telephone number of an operative.
Also, members
of the public should ignore any letter purportedly from the Commission that
requires them to call anybody to discuss time and date of an appointment. An
authentic EFCC letter of invitation would unambiguously state the date and time
an invitee is expected to report and the full name of the officer he is to
report to.
In addition,
interrogations are only conducted in
EFCC offices. Addresses of all EFCC offices are available on the Commission’s
website (www.efccnigeria.org).
It is equally
important that members of the public take cognizance of the eagle in the logo
of the Commission. What we have is a live picture of an eagle and not an artist
impression as contained in the fake letter heads of the fraudster. Moreover,
the ill-tempered and threatening language of the scammers should be sufficient
alert any one as no responsible agency of government would couch official correspond
in such language.
Finally,
members of the public may take the extra steps of verifying the authenticity of
any invitation letters purportedly from the EFCC by contacting the Director, Internal Affairs Department at
Block C, EFCC headquarters, 5 Fomela Street, off Adetokunbo Ademola crescent,
Wuse 2, Abuja, or call any of these numbers: 097831798, 097831799, 08036076316,
08191534236 and 09-4604628 or send an email to: dia@efccnigeria.org. They
could as well send a message through the EFCC facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/
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