Some retired and serving federal civil servants have been arrested by the operatives of the Department of State Service for allegedly planning to steal N4.5bn from the Treasury Single Account.
The service, in a statement by Tony Opuiyo, said that the gang planned to hack the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System domiciled in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and steal the money.
Opuiyo said that the gang was led by one Sunny Okoh, who he described as a hacker who worked in collaboration with the trio of Uwem Ekpo, a Chief Program Analyst in the OAGF, Maxwell Ekene, a retired security operative and Dozie Egwu, who he alleged, was living in Malaysia but is at large.
Opuiyo said that the suspected fraudsters intended to use a software they had sourced and codes released to them by Ekpo to hack government accounts in the Central Bank of Nigeria and defraud the government of the huge sum.
He said if the action had succeeded, it would have created credibility problem for the government and the policy.
“It is instructive to note that a credibility problem would have arisen over the TSA policy if these hackers had succeeded in their plan and thus lend credence to the critics of the policy that it ought not to have been introduced and implemented,” the statement stressed, adding that the suspects had been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission for further investigations and prosecution.
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