BY ANAYO OKOLI
UMUAHIA — FOUR sus-pects were, yesterday, remanded at the Afara Prisons on the orders of an Umuahia Magistrate Court for forging and using the website of Federal Ministry of Science and Technology to defraud foreigners.

Their arrest and subsequent arraignment followed a petition to the Department of State Security by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology that its  website was forged and being used to defraud some foreign nationals.

The suspects are Chukwuma Nwaogu, 30; Okechi Nwaobia Michael, 33; Ifeanyi Dan Nwaubani, 27 and Chigozie Richard.

They were said to have defrauded Polish, Slovak, Indian, Korean and Croatian citizens of various sums of money.

According to the Abia State Director of DSS, Mr. Matthew Obodoechi, the suspects were arrested at 22, Nwaekwe Street, World Bank Housing Estate in Aba.

The suspects were alleged to be working in collaboration with one Fred Chigozie, based in Malaysia who received the money from the victims and remitted their share of the fraudulent proceeds to them.

When they were arraigned before the Magistrate court, they were remanded in the prison because the court has no jurisdiction over the matter.

Meanwhile, the Abia state command of DSS has smashed an Aba based syndicate that specialized in printing fake certificates of universities and other tertiary institutions. Suspected four members of the syndicate were also arrested by the DSS.

The suspected fraudsters who were said to be issuing fake teachers certificates and appraisal certificates for teachers in the state were arrested following a petition by the Abia state Universal Basic Education Board, ASUBEB.

The suspects who were paraded by the DSS include Sunday Ehimere, who is said to be the ring leader, Glory Okoro, Onyedi Isaac and Promise Enang. They were  arrested at 35 Pound Road Aba, from where they use as their operational base.

Recovered from them were fake certificates from the University of Port Harcourt, Ebonyi State College of Education, Ikwo, Abia State College of Education, Arochukwu, among others.

Based on the massive forgery equipment recovered from them, the DSS Director called on the Abia state Government to vet the certificate of its workforce, fearing that many of them could have secured jobs with certificates from the syndicate.

Obodoechi also lamented that there were so many “Yahoo, Yahoo” boys operating in the state and urged the people to be weary of their activities.

“There so many boys doing yahoo, yahoo job in Abia and we want the public to be weary of their activities”, he said.