A businessman, Oladimeji Isiaka, has gone bankrupt after losing about N25m to suspected fraudsters who defrauded him under the pretext of curing his headache, Punch Nigeria reports.
Isiaka, who lived in the Sango Ota area of Ogun State, sold his house and five cars to raise the money. However, after realising that he had been defrauded, he reportedly petitioned the Zone 2 Police Command, Onikan, Lagos State.
Investigations by operatives of the command led to the arrest of five members of the syndicate at their base in Ibadan, Oyo State. They are Alasela Ottun; Yetunde Mustapha, aka Iya Aje Funfun; Ibrahim Jimoh, aka Olobe Aye; Akeem Alabi and Oyegbile Lateef.
A police source said Isiaka was an in-law of Ottun and had sought his counsel sometime in October 2016 when he had the headache, which defied medications.
Ottun, from Iwo, Osun State, after defrauding Isiaka of a few millions of naira, passed him to Mustapha, who pretended to be a white witch with answers to all his problems.
Mustapha, 32, was said to have colluded with her boyfriend, Jimoh, who arranged a scheme through which millions of naira were collected from the victim. Mustapaha said she pretended to be a white witch whenever she spoke with Isiaka, adding that she wore white costume at Ottun’s shrine.
The chief herbalist, Alabi, 39, said: “It is whatever the people seek that we use to defraud them. Some talk about business boom, some about making money or moving to a higher level in life. We make some fake concoctions and collect their money.”
Lateef explained that Isiaka had been cured of the headache, but he craved wealth, adding that it was his greed that the gang exploited. He explained that Isiaka was shown a sack filled with fake dollars, adding that he was asked to bring N8m for the preparation of rituals that would enable him to spend the money.
He said, “Whoever is looking for cheap things will run into heavy losses. He thought we cured him of his headache, not knowing it was God. We just took advantage of that to defraud him.”
