Police arrest man over attempt to defraud Otedola

Operatives of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) in Lagos have arrested a suspected fraudster, Babatunde Oyedepo for alleged attempt to swindle businessman Femi Otedola.

Oyedepo, 23, was alleged to have sent threat and blackmail messages to the complainants and other high profile Nigerians through a website, naijagistlive.com, demanding huge sums of money.

The suspect, a resident of Sixth Avenue in Festac Town, was alleged to have posted a superimposed Nud3 pictures of a lawyer on his website, alleging that she had been sleeping with her boss and other clients.

According to the police, the suspect demanded N3.5million from the lawyer to remove the inappropriate picture from the site, which the victim could not afford.

A source said: “The victim had allegedly told the suspect that she has no such money in her account and that the picture posted on the website had cost her, her job, her marriage and her social life. The lawyer is among the three different persons who petitioned the suspect.”

Spokesman for SFU, Lawal Audu, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) said the suspect has three different cases pending before the unit, adding that the first two involved fraud and threat to life.

According to him, on October 19, one Dapo Balogun reported a case of extortion, black mail and threat to life against the suspect.“The complainant claimed that the suspect had posted on naijagistlife.com a story alleging that he had worked with former Petroleum Minister, Deziani Allison-Maduekwe and that throughout the period he had fraudulently acquired huge sum of money.

“The complainant also claimed to have received a mail from the suspect, informing him that he should pay an undisclosed amount running into millions to enable him remove the provocative story from the site.

“He alleged that since then he had been receiving threat messages from unknown callers demanding huge sum or risk being being kidnapped.

“The second complainant is Femi Otedola. He claimed that the suspect posted an annoying story on the same naijagistlife.com accusing him of sleeping with different girls in his office.”

“The suspect has another fraud case pending at the Federal High court.”
But Oyedepo denied being responsible for the actions, insisting that he was framed by the owners of the website which he only designed.

The school dropout who claimed to be a website designer, said that he was contacted through email to design the website.

He said: “I design websites for people and after designing the site I will include my contacts in the website to attract other customers. I was arrested through my contact on naijagistlive.com.”